[eepro100-bug] Re: Intel 82562 LAN controller

[Donald Becker]

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Bob Gorman wrote:

 > Can anyone comment on the current and potential future suitability of the
 > eepro100 driver for the Intel 82562 LAN controller?
 >
 > There was some talk about supporting it under kernel 2.4.19:
 >          http://www.scyld.com/pipermail/eepro100-bug/2002-July/000043.html

No, that was me saying the my driver already supports the chip.

I can't control what is put into the kernel.

 >          <arjanv@redhat.com> (02/04/04 1.220.5.2)
 >          Merge some new PCI IDs from 2.5.x e100 to eepro100 net driver.

That's a foolish thing to do -- you must understand how the driver works
before making changes.

 > I am looking at a motherboard (845GL) which uses the 82562ET and am
 > wondering if the LAN controller will ever work under a stock Linux kernel.
 >
 > According to the Intel docs it is backward compatible with the 82557, 82558
 > and 82559.
 >
 > However, I read the Unsupported Boards section of
 > http://www.scyld.com/network/ where it states that:
 >
 >  >No board with an on-board processor is supported, because these
 > invariably have a proprietary/undocumented interface. (EEPro Server and
 > Matrox multiport PCI switch cards fall into this category.)

This refers to crypto NICs.

 > Of course, Intel does provide excellent documentation as shown below in the
 > datasheet for the 82801DB I/O Controller.

Have you read it?  That is _not_ a complete datasheet.  It tell you how
to wire it up, and how to program the configuration EEPROM, but how to
use the NIC.

[[ I checked out the new datasheet -- it does document more status bits,
but it's still far from being a programming datasheet. ]]

 > So where does this leave us?  Would Donald Becker care to comment?  TIA!

 > Relates docs:
 > http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/845GL/
 > http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/29074401.pdf
 >
 > http://www.intel.com/design/network/products/lan/controllers/82562.htm
 > http://www.intel.com/design/network/prodbrf/82562.pdf
 >
 > http://www.intel.com/design/network/drivers/
 > http://support.intel.com/support/network/adapter/pro100/31351.htm
 >
 > http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/845/
 >

-- 
Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Scyld Beowulf cluster system
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993