[tulip] samsung SC1200-TX weirdness?

[Donald Becker]

On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, John Sutton wrote:

> I'm running linux kernel 2.2.19 with the latest tulip.c (v0.93 11/7/2001)
> compiled into the kernel.  Attempting to get some samsung SC1200-TX cards going
> but with mixed results this far ;-(
..
> kernel: eth0: Digital DS21140A Tulip rev 34 at 0xe400, 00:40:05:A5:86:CC, IRQ10.
> kernel: eth0:  EEPROM default media type Autosense.
> kernel: eth0:  Index #0 - Media MII (#11) described by a 21140 MII PHY (1) block.
> kernel: eth0:  MII transceiver #0 config 0000 status 780d advertising 0001.
> kernel: tulip.c:v0.93 11/7/2001  Written by Donald Becker <becker@scyld.com>
> kernel:   http://www.scyld.com/network/tulip.html
> kernel: eth0: Setting full-duplex based on MII #0 link partner capability of 41e1.

This looks fine.  A 21140 with a MII transceiver should be handled
correctly by almost any tulip driver from the past six years.

> but it appears (from the led on the backplate) to be only running at half
> duplex? tulip-diag -e gives:

The LED setting may not be accurate, even when the card is correctly
operating.  The LED should is normally driven by the MII transceiver,
but it may be connected to the GPIO (general purpose) pins on the 21140A
and require special card-specific magic.

> tulip-diag.c:v2.10 3/08/2002 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
>  http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
> Index #1: Found a Digital DS21140 Tulip adapter at 0xe400.
>  Port selection is MII, full-duplex.

Looks good.
Is the card working at this point?

>  CSR12 direction setting bits 0x00.
>  1 transceiver description blocks:
>   Media MII, block type 1, length 12.
>    MII interface PHY 0 (media type 11).
>     No MII reset sequence.    No MII initialization sequence.
>     Media capabilities are 7800, advertising 01e1.
>     Full-duplex map 5000, Threshold map 1800.
>  MII PHY found at address 0, status 0x782d.

This looks pretty generic.

> However, the real show stopper is that I'm running a diskless client
> config so I need to boot from a kernel which has been pulled over the
> network.  To do this I've built a bootrom image using the netboot
> package and the DOS packet driver SC1200.COM supplied with the cards.
> And this works fine - it pulls the kernel using TFTP *and* using full
> duplex - until the kernel loads the tulip driver, at which point the
> card switches to half duplex (judging by the led) and then the whole
> thing locks up with "neighbour table overflow" messages spitting out!

Hmmm, something else is happening here.  Just switching to half duplex
will cause bad performance, but you should still get some packets
through.


> So, in summary:
> boot the system directly with the linux kernel, OK except only get
> half duplex (and passing the ether=0,0,0x200,eth0 kernel param makes
> no difference)

What is the packet and error counts in /proc/net/dev?

-- 
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