[tulip] ton o' errors with netgear NIC

[Donald Becker]

On Tue, 23 May 2000 undefined@engineer.com wrote:

> In my home I have 2 computers, each with a Netgear card, connected merely 
> by a crossover cable.  Under light network-traffic loads running 
..
> connected by cat5 crossover cable
> 
> EDITORIAL NOTE: Hardware addresses withheld due to privacy concerns.  If 

There is no reason to go to the effort.  The most malicious thing someone
could do with the info is trigger Wake-On-LAN, but your boards don't support
Wake-On-LAN.

> tulip.c:v0.92 4/17/2000  Written by Donald Becker <becker@scyld.com>
>    http://www.scyld.com/network/tulip.html
> eth0: Lite-On 82c168 PNIC rev 32 at 0xc40f1000, **:**:**:**:**:**, IRQ 5.
> eth0:  MII transceiver #1 config 3000 status 7829 advertising 01e1.

>     Receive
> bytes    packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast
>   1008022    1427  523    0    0  1046          0         0
>    Transmit
> bytes    packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
>   1662749    1855  307    0    0   276     307          0

You might have a bad crossover cable.  It's probably mispaired.

Or your link partner might be set to forced full duplex.

>   MII PHY #1 transceiver registers:
>     3000 782d 0040 6212 01e1 0021 0000 0000
>     0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
>     5000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0300 0000
>     003c 8006 0f00 ff00 002c 4000 0080 000b.
>   Vendor ID is 00:10:18:--:--:--, model 33 rev. 2.
>     No specific information is known about this transceiver type.

What transceiver type are you using?

> ne.c:v1.10 9/23/94 Donald Becker (becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov)
> NE*000 ethercard probe at 0x300: ** ** ** ** ** **
> eth0: NE2000 found at 0x300, using IRQ 10.
>     Receive
> bytes    packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast
>   1667226    1940    0    0    0   230          0         1
>    Transmit
> bytes    packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
>   1562737    2043    0    0    0     0       0          0

Hmmm, no collisions.  Very, very suspicious.
I'm guessing forced-full-duplex at this point.

> What have I tried so far?  I noticed that the tulip was the one screaming 
> about errors, so I assume (very possibly incorectly) that the problem lies 
> with it.  The network slowdown is also greatest when transfering from tulip 

Nope.  It's almost certainly a configuration or hardware error.

> RX) on one end?  I did flip-flop which end of the crossover cable was 
> plugged into which computer, but all the errors continued to be reported by 
> tulip.  If this is very possibly the problem, then I'll purchase another 
> crossover cable for testing, but I would prefer to not have to.

I've been buying Belkin crossover cables from buy.com.
They are cheap, and clearly coded with grey molded ends on a yellow cable.

This isn't a specific endorsement for Buy.com, but they do have good prices
right now.  They must be operating at big loss to have low prices and such
bad shipping practices -- one of my orders came with one cable per box!

Anyway, check the forced-full-duplex setting on the NE2000 card.

Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210
Annapolis MD 21403