[vortex] PCI NIC 3C980 driver under kernel 2.4.18

[Donald Becker]

On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, Erich Minderlein wrote:

> Subject: [vortex] PCI NIC 3C980 driver under kernel 2.4.18
> in 2000 I bought a Server System with a configuration of 3 NIC,
> (1* eeproo100, onboard  2 of the above plug in)
> see the output of lspci -vx following as attachm. 1
...
> kernel 2.4.18 seems to have only this driver for 3com PCI NIC 3C980
> ls -l /usr/src/linux-2.4.18/drivers/net/3c59x.c
> -rw-r--r--    1 573      573         99841 Dez 21  2001 
> /usr/src/linux-2.4.18/drivers/net/3c59x.c
> 
> I used
> options=12,12 and various other such as options=0x0204,0x0204

Why are you using those options?  That will force the board to attempt
to use a SYM (symbol) transceiver, which it doesn't have.  The 3c980 has
an on-chip MII transceiver, which uses the "NWay" port. 

See
   http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
where it documents
   4    100baseTx Symbol mode, valid for 3c595 only.

> This combination runs with only 10 Mbit / s , if it runs at all

Yes, that's what happens when you force the wrong transceiver type!

> Observing the hint of using the 3COM provided DOS tool to set
> the NIC EEPROM has had disastrous effects today, such as destroying 3 
> partitions and making all 3 network cards disappear on start of the 
> kernel. (insmod failed 3X) (it is a linux only server. )

It's unlikely that the 3Com tool corrupted disk partitions.

> What is the correct driver (version) for this card ?
> (Python-T is not mentioned in my 3c59x.c)

The name "Python-T" isn't one I'm familiar with.

> What are the correct options for FD 100MB/s ? for other cards it says 
> 0x0204, but ... dont work.

Why do you need to force 100baseTx-FDX?
Forcing full duplex is non-standard, and it's generally an incorrect
setting.

My suggestion:

Remove all module options

Do

mkdir /tmp/netdrivers/
cd /tmp/netdrivers/
ncftpget ftp://ftp.scyld.com/pub/network/netdrivers.tgz
tar xfvz netdrivers.tgz
make
make install

-- 
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