LinkSys LC82C169 question

Maurice Hilarius maurice@harddata.com
Mon Nov 30 10:46:39 1998


With regards to your message at 02:40 AM 11-30-98 -0800, Dan Hugo. Where
you stated:
>I've read the page at
>http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/tulip.html
>
>I'm trying to get at least one (eventually two) of these cards working
>with a 2.0.34 kernel (Debian 2.0 dist, i386)
>
>I've got the tulip driver loading as a module.  the boot message shows a
>Lite-On card, 0xe000, IRQ 11 and the tulip.c version line.
>
>With no extra options or anything, the card seems to be broadcasting (?)
>or something, and continues to do so every few seconds.  I have a 5 port
>10BaseT hub (LinkSys also) that I know works, but with this card on its
>port light blinks like crazy every few seconds, and the collision light
>is on.  When the port light stops blinking, the collision light goes
>off.
>
>I compiled and ran the tulip-diag program.  Run with no options, it
>reports that there is no tulip card in /proc, so I run it with -p0xe000
>and it seems to detect the card.  
>
>I can get the output if that will help.  It does show a growing number
>of errors on Tx and Rx, of course, and if I unplug the UTP, I get
>timeout messages every few seconds.
>
>
>I added options=0, no change,
>options=4, continous blinking/collision, as opposed to periodic
>blinking/silence.
>
>
>I am not at all certain what to do at this point... any suggestions?
>
>(The machine is off right now, as the memory I got had some problems,
>otherwise I would provide more info in this message... if more info is
>necessary, I can boot it up with low memory...)
>
>
>Thanks for any info
>
>Dan Hugo

Hi Dan.
We have had some similar situations with various cards and tulip .90
We recently reverted to .89H and it doesn't display this behaviour of the
spurious packet floods. I believe .90 has a bug in it's media detection or
similar that causes this problem with some cards. 
We observed this bahavour with 21140 on Netgear, LiteOn on Netgear, 21143
on Samsung/API Alpha motherboards, and 21140 on Kingston KNE100. It did not
happen with DLink DFE500Tx or on DEC DE500.



Best regards,

  Maurice W. Hilarius                   Telephone: 01-403-414-9319
  Hard Data Ltd.                      **FAX:       01-403-456-1510
  11060 - 166 Avenue                    email:maurice@harddata.com
  Edmonton, AB, Canada  - T5X 1Y3       http://www.harddata.com