[realtek] GF4050C (RTL8139)

[Donald Becker]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, John Traill wrote:
> Donald Becker wrote:
> > On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, John Traill wrote:

> > > Subject: [realtek] GF4050C (RTL8139)
> > > Has anyone had any success with the above card. Its a 5-port 100BaseT
> > > hub which refuses to work in my x86 debian 2.2 ssytem.
...
> > > Only one of the ports is detected by the kernel
> > 
> > This is likely the correct behavior.  This isn't a five port card.
> > It is a regular ethernet adapter connected to a five port repeater or
> > switch.
> > 
> > > and it never receives
> > > any packets as report by ifconfig or by increasing the debug level.
> > 
> > What does 'mii-diag' or 'rtl8139-diag -am' report?
...
> rtl8139.c:v1.13 1/9/2001 Donald Becker, becker@scyld.com.
>  http://www.scyld.com/network/rtl8139.html
> eth0: RealTek RTL8139 Fast Ethernet at 0xd000, IRQ 9, 00:c0:df:04:8f:6c.
...
> eth0: Setting half-duplex based on auto-negotiated partner ability 0000.

Hmmm, the hub section of the card must have a specialized connection.
It doesn't do autonegotiation.

The advertising for the card doesn't claim it's a switch, so it's likely
a repeater.  Thus the half duplex default setting shouldn't be a problem.

What chips are on the card?  RTL8139C?  And what others?

> eth0: Queued Tx packet at c35b3922 size 42 to slot 1.
> eth0: interrupt  status=0x0004 new intstat=0x0000.
> eth0: interrupt  status=0x0000 new intstat=0x0000.

This looks normal.

> rtl8139-diag.c:v2.04 8/08/2001 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
...
>  The chip configuration is 0x10 0x2c, MII half-duplex mode.
>  The RTL8139 does not use a MII transceiver.
>  It does have internal MII-compatible registers:
>    Basic mode control register   0x7809.

Hmmm, no link beat reported.
This could indicate the problem.

Either the hub chip requires a special power-up signal, or the rtl8139
requires special configuration to work without link beat.

The power-up signal seems unlikely, since the hub should work even if
the OS isn't loaded.  You can verify this by seeing if other machines
can pass traffic immediately when the host is first powered on.

If the rtl8139 requires a special configuration to work without link
beat, try doing 
  mii-diag eth0 -F 100baseTx
and
  mii-diag eth0 -F 100baseTx-FDX
to see if any packets are received.  The full duplex setting is wrong,
but it might fool the chip into ignoring the lack of link beat.


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