No subject

[Andreas Steinmetz]

Hi,
I had real problems with the epic100.c driver. I'm using SMC9432BTX cards
with the driver compiled into the kernel (the systems using these cards are
firewalls, so mudoles are disabled for security reasons...).
Now, at the time I started up with the cards version 1.04 of the epic100.c
driver was the current version. Unfortunately (with 2.2.x kernels, didn't
try other) this driver caused the card to be deaf and blind. Luckily, after
a (longer) while of archie research I grabbed hold of an old 0.99B version
of the driver which did work at once. So I thought I could stick with it
and be happy. Wrong. The 3com switch I'm using and the driver didn't really
like each other thus me having to unplug and then to plug again the cat 5
cables after a system reboot.
Now, looking at Donald Becker's web site there's the new 1.06 version, me
downloading, compiling, hoping but - you can guess - the cards kept
strictly to the deaf and blind operation mode.
So I had to look at the problem a little bit more in detail. As, for some
obsure reason, some of the cards worked once in a while after an ifconfig I
suspected the epic_open() routine being the cause of disaster. I simply
replaced the 1.06 epic_open() with the 0.99B epic_open() and voila - the
cards worked. So I tracked this down further and found out that a simple
fix was required to get the cards to work. The diff -u of the original
source and my patched version show that exactly one statement is now
commented:

====================cut here=================================================
--- epic100.c.106	Thu Mar  4 12:51:09 1999
+++ epic100.c.106.patched	Thu Mar  4 14:53:04 1999
@@ -621,7 +621,9 @@
 	   required by the details of which bits are reset and the transceiver
 	   wiring on the Ositech CardBus card.
 	*/
+#if 0
 	outl(0x12, ioaddr + MIICfg);
+#endif
 	if (ep->chip_flags & MII_PWRDWN)
 		outl((inl(ioaddr + NVCTL) & ~0x003C) | 0x4800, ioaddr + NVCTL);
====================cut here=================================================

I don't know what this statement does (I just don't have the time to read
data sheets now) but maybe Donald Becker can clarify things. If your
epic100.c driver doesn't work maybe you need this fix.

Cheers --
Andreas Steinmetz

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