[vortex] driver problem

Chris Jones chris@black-sun.co.uk
Wed, 13 Sep 2000 18:34:20 +0100


Hi

Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
> `vortex-diag' command immediately after inserting the module and prior
> to bringing the interface up?

I think the interface may have been up when I ran it. Below is the output of
vortex-diag with the module freshly loaded and with the interface down.
 
> How often do the Tx timeouts occur?
> Are they correlated with heavy network activity?

The don't occur for low traffic activity (e.g. pinging, simple telnet stuff,
etc.), they only occur when something high bandwidth occurs, such as an ftp
transfer (I've been testing it by moving ISO images around by ftp) and when
such traffic occurs they are very frequent (ie several per second).
 
> Can you try a different hub, or a direct-connect cable?

I don't have any other hubs to test with, but I'll reboot into a 2.2 kernel
and try that. If the problem still occurs I'll crimp up a crossover cable
and try that.
I'm fairly sure it's not a hardware problem though - the card works
absolutely perfectly in Windows2000 using the stock driver that comes with
win2k. I was able to transfer a several hundred meg file at very good speeds
(to the point that the collision light on the hub was on permenantly and the
traffic lights were blinking like crazy ;).
 
> What does `ifconfig' have to say about errors counts?

Bizarrely it lists absolutely zero errors:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:10:5A:20:60:12  
          inet addr:192.168.0.3  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:159 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:259 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:42 txqueuelen:100 
          Interrupt:16 Base address:0xd000 

This was after ftp'ing 400KB of an ISO image to another box on the LAN. It
took about 5 minutes to do that much and according to ncftp the speed of
transfer continually dropped all the way through the connection (it was down
to about 800 bytes/second when I killed it).

-- 
 _____ _         _       _____
| __  | |___ ___| |_ ___|   __|_ _ ___        Chris "Ng" Jones
| __ -| | .'|  _| '_|___|__   | | |   |  chris@black-sun.co.uk
|_____|_|__,|___|_,_|   |_____|___|_|_|    www.black-sun.co.uk
            S o f t w a r e

vortex-diag.c:v2.02 7/1/2000 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
 http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
Index #1: Found a 3c905B Cyclone 100baseTx adapter at 0xd000.
The Vortex chip may be active, so FIFO registers will not be read.
To see all register values use the '-f' flag.
Initial window 4, registers values by window:
  Window 0: 0000 0000 0000 0000 f5f5 00bf 0000 0000.
  Window 1: FIFO FIFO 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 2000.
  Window 2: 1000 205a 1260 0000 0000 0000 000a 4000.
  Window 3: 0000 0180 05ea 0000 000a 0800 0800 6000.
  Window 4: 0000 0000 0000 0018 0003 8880 0000 8000.
  Window 5: 1ffc 0000 0000 1ffc 0800 0000 0000 a000.
  Window 6: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 c000.
  Window 7: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 e000.
Vortex chip registers at 0xd000 
  0xD010: **FIFO** 00000000 00000000 *STATUS*
  0xD020: 00000000 00000000 00080000 00000004
  0xD030: 00000000 07eef812 00000000 00080004
 Indication enable is 0000, interrupt enable is 0000.
 No interrupt sources are pending.
 Transceiver/media interfaces available:  100baseTx 10baseT.
Transceiver type in use:  Autonegotiate.
 MAC settings: half-duplex.     
 Station address set to 00:10:5a:20:60:12.
 Configuration options 000a.    
EEPROM contents (64 words):     
 0x000: 0010 5a20 6012 9055 c51a 0036 5051 6d50
 0x008: 2971 0000 0010 5a20 6012 0020 0000 0022
 0x010: 32a2 0000 0000 0180 0000 0004 0000 10b7
 0x018: 9055 000a 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
 0x020: 0037 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
 0x028: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
 0x030: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
 0x038: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
 The word-wide EEPROM checksum is 0x86f0.
Parsing the EEPROM of a 3Com Vortex/Boomerang:
 3Com Node Address 00:10:5A:20:60:12 (used as a unique ID only).
 OEM Station address 00:10:5A:20:60:12 (used as the ethernet address).
 Manufacture date (MM/DD/YYYY) 8/26/1998, division 6, product QP.
Options: none.
  Vortex format checksum is incorrect (005f vs. 10b7).
  Cyclone format checksum is correct (0x37 vs. 0x37).
  Hurricane format checksum is correct (0x37 vs. 0x37).