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Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!nic.hookup.net!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!concert!samba.oit.unc.edu!sunSITE!mdw From: Paul Gortmaker <gpg109@rsphysse.anu.edu.au> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce,comp.os.linux.admin,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: Linux Ethernet HOWTO (Part 1/2) Followup-To: poster Date: 15 Dec 1993 22:08:20 GMT Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Lines: 1008 Approved: linux-announce@tc.cornell.edu (Matt Welsh) Message-ID: <2eo1sk$64q@samba.oit.unc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: calypso.oit.unc.edu Keywords: Linux, Ethernet, TCP/IP, NET-2 Originator: mdw@sunSITE Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.os.linux.announce:1566 comp.os.linux.admin:2497 comp.answers:3041 news.answers:15863 Archive-Name: linux/howto/ethernet/part1 Last-Modified: November 16, 1993 Linux Ethernet HOWTO v0.3 -- Last updated November 6, 1993 ================================================================= INDEX: (Part 1/2) 0 Introduction. 0.01 How do I use this Guide? 0.01 Disclaimer 0.02 Questions already? 0.03 Related Documentation 0.04 New Versions of this Document 0.05 Feedback 1 What card should I buy for Linux? 1.01 Eight bit vs 16 bit 1.02 Low price Ethernet cards 1.03 Vendors and brands to avoid. 1.04 Type of cable that your card should support 2 Status of various Ethernet cards under Linux. 2.01 3Com 2.02 Western Digital / SMC 2.03 NExxxx 2.04 Hewlett Packard Cards 2.05 D-Link 2.06 Cabletron 2.07 Allied Telesis 2.08 Arcnet 2.09 Digital / DEC 2.10 Intel 2.11 PureData 2.12 Xircom 2.13 Zenith 2.14 Racal-Interlan 2.15 AMD LANCE (79C960) 2.16 AT-Lan-Tec 3 Clones of popular Ethernet cards. 3.01 WD80x3 Clones 3.02 NE2000 Clones 4 Cables, coax, twisted pairs etc. 4.01 Thin Ethernet (thinnet) 4.02 Twisted Pair 4.03 Thick Ethernet (Part 2/2) 5 Technical information. 5.01 Probed addresses 5.02 Skeleton / prototype driver 5.03 Driver interface to the kernel 5.04 Interrupts and linux 5.05 Programmed I/O vs. shared mem. vs slave/master DMA 5.06 Programming the Intel chips (i82586 and i82593) 5.07 Programming information from 3Com 5.08 Notes on AMD PCnet-ISA / LANCE Based cards (79C960) 5.09 Multicast and Promiscuous mode 5.10 The Berkely Packet Filter (BPF) 5.11 Unresolved questions / concerns 6 Possible problems, questions and troubleshooting. 6.01 Problems with NE2000 (and clones) 6.02 Problems with WD80*3 cards 6.03 Problems with 3Com cards 7 Networking with a laptop computer. 7.01 Option 1 -- using SLIP 7.02 Option 2 -- Built in NE2000 compatible or PCMCIA Ethercard. 7.03 Option 3 -- ISA Ethercard in the docking station. 7.04 Option 4 -- Pocket / parallel port adaptors. 8 Frequently asked questions. 8.01 Just the FAQ's ma'am -- just the FAQ's. 9 Miscellaneous. 9.01 The Cabletron story. 9.02 The Xircom story 9.03 Closing ====================================================================== 0. Introduction. This is the Ethernet-HOWTO, which is a compilation of information about which ethernet devices can be used for Linux, and how to set them up. This Ethernet-HOWTO is by: Donald J. Becker <becker@super.org> Paul Gortmaker <gpg109@rsphysse.anu.edu.au> It covers what cards you should and shouldn't buy; how to set them up, how to run more than one, and other common problems and questions. It does *not* cover the software end of things, as that is covered in the NET-2 HOWTO. You can freely distribute this document as long as you distribute an original copy with the author's names intact. Other people who have contributed (directly or indirectly) are, in alphabetical order: Peter Bauer <pbauer@rnivh.rni.sub.org> Ross Biro <bir7@leland.Stanford.EDU> Alan Cox <iiitac@pyr.swan.ac.uk> Bjorn Ekwall <bj0rn@blox.se> Mike Jagdis <jaggy@purplet.demon.co.uk> Duke Kamstra <kamstra@ccmail.west.smc.com> Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com> Cameron Spitzer <cls@truffula.sj.ca.us> <camerons@NAD.3Com.com> Dave Roberts <david.roberts@amd.com> Glenn Talbott <gt@hprnd.rose.hp.com> Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels@cistron.nl.mugnet.org> Many thanks to the above people, and all the other unmentioned testers out there. 0.01 How Do I Use This Guide? As this guide is getting bigger and bigger, you probably don't want to spend the rest of your afternoon reading the whole thing. And you don't *have* to read it all. If you haven't got an ethernet card, then you will want to start with section one to see what you should buy, and what you should avoid. If you have already got an ethernet card, but are not sure if you can use it with Linux, then you will want to read section two, which contains specific information on each manufacturer, and their cards. If you are having trouble with your card, then you will want to read the specific information about your card in section two and the troubleshooting information in section six. If you are intersted in some of the technical aspects of the device drivers, then you can find that information in section 5. 0.01 Disclaimer This document is *not* gospel. However, it is probably the most up to date info that you will be able to find. Nobody is responsible for what happens to your hardware but yourself. If your ethercard or any other hardware goes up in smoke (...nearly impossible!) we take no responsibility. ie. THE AUTHORS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES INCURRED DUE TO ACTIONS TAKEN BASED ON THE INFORMATION INCLUDED IN THIS DOCUMENT. 0.02 Questions already? If you have questions about your ethernet card, please READ this document first. You may also want to join the NET channel of the Linux-activists mailing list by sending mail to linux-activists-request@niksula.hut.fi with the line X-Mn-Admin: join NET at the top of the message body (not the subject). If you want to learn how to use the mailing channels, then send an empty message to the above address, and you will get an instruction manual sent back to you in a few hours. However, it is worth noting that the NET channel is primarily used for discussion of the networking code, and you may not see much discussion about a particular driver. Furthermore keep in mind that the NET channel is for development discussions only. General questions on how to configure your system should be directed to comp.os.linux.help unless you are actively involved in the development of part of the networking for Linux. We ask that you *please* respect this general guideline for content. You can safely bet that neither of the authors will respond to any plea for help that *should* be posted to c.o.l.help, but is inappropraitely placed elsewhere. 0.03 Related Documentation Much of this info came from saved postings from the comp.os.linux groups, which shows that it is a valuable resource of information. Other useful information came from a bunch of small files by Donald himself. Some of these are found at /pub/linux/info on ftp.super.org [192.31.192.1] Of course, if you are setting up an Ethernet card, then you will want to read the NET-2 HOWTO so that you can actually do something with it. This is also the home of any alpha drivers that are not presently in the kernel. And last but not least, the contributions from the individuals and companies listed above are greatly appreciated as well. 0.04 New versions of this document New versions of this document can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/* and various Linux ftp mirror sites. It will also be posted to the newsgroup comp.os.linux.announce at a regular interval. Updates will be made as new information / drivers becomes available. 0.05 Feedback Any corrections can be sent to one of us (gpg109@rsphysse.anu.edu.au or becker@super.org) We will *attempt* to keep this up to date as more drivers become available, and as NET-2 matures. 1 What card should I buy for Linux? For impatient users that just want a quick, cheap answer the summary is: get 16 bit thinnet 8013 cards. For more detail as to the who what where and why, read on. 1.01 Eight bit vs 16 bit Unless you are a light user, or are confined to using the smaller ISA slot, the use of the 8 bit cards like the wd8003 and the 3c503 is really not worth the cost savings. Get the 8013 or the 3c503/16 instead. 1.02 Low price Ethernet cards I keep track of the current low-price vendors, just because it's asked so often. Call AT-LAN-TEC at 301-948-7070. Ask for their technical support person, "Vincent Bono". As with all purchases, you should indicate you are buying this for a Linux system. The last I checked the price for 10 NE2000s was $480, or $48 ea.! NB: Their current NE2000 clone is a model that "traps" other drivers that probe into their address space. AT-LAN-TEC also carries a clone, non-EEPROM 8013 board for somewhat more, and a NE2100 clone. Either is a better choice if the very lowest price isn't essential. The Allied Telesis AT1500 is offered at a good price by many vendors. Even Inmac, known for their premium markup, has this card for under $100. 1.03 Vendors and Brands to Avoid These vendors have decided *not* to release programming information about their products, without signing a non-disclosure agreement. More information can be found in sections two and nine. Hence there is no support for products offered from these companies: (1) Cabletron (2) Xircom These particular cards should be avoided, as they are obsolete. The reasons as to why they have been classified as such can be found in section 2 of this document. (1) 3c501 (2) Arcnet 1.04 Type of cable that your card should support Unless you have to conform to an existing network, you will want to use thinnet or thin ethernet cable. This is the style with the standard BNC connectors. See section 4 for other concerns with different types of ethernet cable. Most ethercards also come in a "Combo" version for only $10-$20 more. These have both twisted pair and thinnet transceiver built-in, allowing you to change your mind later. 2 Status of Various Ethernet Cards under Linux The only thing that one needs to use an ethernet card with Linux is the appropriate driver. For this, it is essential that the manufacturer will release the technical programming information to the general public without you (or anyone) having to sign your life away. A good guide for the likelihood of getting documentation (or, if you aren't writing code, the likelihood that someone else will write that driver you really, really need) is the availability of the Crynwr (nee Clarkson) packet driver. Russ Nelson (see the acknowledgements in the intro.) runs this operation, and has been very helpful in supporting the development of drivers for Linux. Given the documentation, you can write a driver for your card and use it for Linux, at least in theory. Keep in mind that some old hardware that was designed for XT type machines will not function very well in a multitasking environment such as Linux. Use of these will lead to major problems if your network sees a reasonable amount of traffic. Most cards come with drivers for MS-DOS interfaces such as NDIS and ODI, but these are useless for Linux. Many people have suggested directly linking them in or automatic translation, but this is nearly impossible. The MS-DOS drivers expect to be in 16 bit mode and hook into "software interrupts", both incompatible with the Linux kernel. This incompatibility is actually a feature, as some Linux drivers are considerably better than their MS-DOS counterparts. The "8390" series drivers, for instance, use ping-pong transmit buffers, which are only now being introduced in the MS-DOS world. Keep in mind that PC ethercards have the widest variety of interfaces (shared memory, programmed I/O, bus-master, or slave DMA) of any computer hardware for anything, and supporting a new ethercard sometimes requires re-thinking most of the lower-level networking code. (If you are interested in learning more about these different forms of interfaces, see section 5) Also, similar product numbers don't always indicate similar products. For instance, the 3c50* product line from 3Com varies wildly between different members. Enough talk. Let's get down to the information you want. 2.01 3Com Supported: 3c503, 3c503/16 3Com shared-memory ethercards. They also have a programmed I/O mode that doesn't use the 8390 facilities (their engineers found too many bugs!) It should be about the same speed as the same bus width WD80x3, but I don't have a 16 bit version to benchmark. Unless you are a light user, spend the extra money and get the 16 bit model, as the price difference isn't significant. The 3c503 does not have "EEPROM setup", so the diagnostic/setup program isn't needed before running the card with Linux. The shared memory address of the 3c503 is set using jumpers that are shared with the boot PROM address. This is confusing to people familiar with other ISA cards, where you always leave the jumper set to "disable" unless you have a boot PROM. The Linux 3c503 driver can also work with the 3c503 programmed-I/O mode, but this is slower and less reliable than shared memory mode. Also, programmed-I/O mode is not tested when updating the drivers, the deadman (deadcard?) check code may falsely timeout on some machines, and the probe for a 3c503 in programmed-I/O mode is turned off by default in some versions of the kernel. This was a panic reaction to the general device driver probe explosion; the 3c503 shared memory probe is a safe read from memory, rather than an extensive scan through I/O space. As of pl13, the kernel has a I/O port registrar that makes I/O space probes safer, (see section 5.1 for more info.) and the programmed-I/O 3c503 probe has been re-enabled. You still shouldn't use the programmed-I/O mode though, unless you need it for MS-DOS compatibility. The 3c503's IRQ line is set in software, with no hints from an EEPROM. Unlike the MS-DOS drivers, the Linux driver has capability to autoIRQ: it uses the first available IRQ line in {5,2/9,3,4}, selected each time the card is 'ifconfig'ed. (Older driver versions selected the IRQ at boot time.) The ioctl() call in 'ifconfig' will return EAGAIN if no IRQ line is available at that time. The 0.99pl13 open-time-autoIRQ 3c503 driver has two minor bugs. The first is that autoIRQ list is effect- ively {5, 3, 4} instead of {5, 2/9, 3, 4}. The second is that if you use autoIRQ the interrupt channel isn't set the first time, and the board is frozen until the first transmit timeout triggers a board reset. After that, everything works fine. The fixed version will be in pl14 if alpha-tester reports are received in time. 3c509 A new card from 3Com. It's inexpensive and has excellent performance for a non-bus-master design. The drawbacks are that it _requires_ very low interrupt latency, and it isn't rated for bus speeds greater than 8Mhz. A working 3c509 driver is included as an alpha-test version in the 0.99pl13 kernel sources, but it's not enabled by default. You'll have to edit config.in by hand to remove the comment character in front of the 3c509 line. The 3c509 has a tiny Rx buffer, causing the driver to occasionally drop a packet if interrupts are masked for too long. To minimize this problem, the driver should be completely rewritten to use predictive interrupts. (Note: performance re-writes of working drivers are low priority unless there is some particular incentive or need.) It's likely that the EISA 3c579 probe will be working and tested before a new driver is done, so watch for an interim release. There is also an alpha version of a Linux 3c509 diagnostic and EEPROM setup program, but for now users that don't like the defaults should use the MS-DOS EEPROM setup program. 3c579 The EISA version of the 509. The current EISA version uses the same 16 bit wide chip rather than a 32 bit interface, so the performance increase isn't stunning. The 3c509 driver should work with the EISA version, if the EISA version is configured to an ISA base address. (I have neither an EISA machine nor a 3c579 to test it on. -djb) We would be interested in hearing progress reports from any 3c579 users. (Read the above 3c509 section for info on the driver.) Cameron Spitzer writes: "The 3C579 (Etherlink III EISA) should be configured as an EISA card. The IO Base Address (window 0 register 6 bits 4:0) should be 1f, which selects EISA addressing mode. Logic outside the ASIC decodes the IO address s000, where s is the slot number. I don't think it was documented real well. Except for its IO Base Address, the '579 should behave EXACTLY like the '509 (EL3 ISA), and if it doesn't, I want to hear about it (at my work address). I will leave it to the Real Programmers to suggest the right hack to /usr/src/linux/net/inet/3c509.c to take care of the EISA case. Beware that if you put a '509 in EISA addressing mode by mistake and save that in the EEPROM, you'll have to use an EISA machine or the infamous Test Via to get it back to normal, and it will conflict at IO location 0 which may hang your ISA machine. It's not my job to say whether this is a bug or feature, but I have heard loud and clear that customers don't like it and I don't think we'll do it that way again." Unsupported: 3c501 Too brain-damaged to use. Available surplus from many places. Avoid it like the plague. Again, do not purchase this card, even as a joke. It's performance is horrible, and it breaks in many ways. (I have a standing offer: I'll pay $2 for each 3c501 shipped to me postpaid, but only if you include the BNC 'T' connector and the jumpers. $2.50 if you just send the 'T', jumpers, and address PROM and promise to destroy the board. -djb) Cameron L. Spitzer of 3Com said: "I'm speaking only for myself here, of course, but I believe 3Com advises against installing a 3C501 in a new system, mostly for the same reasons Donald has discussed. You probably won't be happy with the 3C501 in your Linux box. The data sheet is marked "(obsolete)" on 3Com's Developers' Order Form, and the board is not part of 3Com's program for sending free Technical Reference Manuals to people who need them. The decade-old things are nearly indestructible, but that's about all they've got going for them any more." For those not yet convinced, the 3c501 can only do one thing at a time -- while you are removing one packet from the single-packet buffer it cannot receive another packet, nor can it receive a packet while are loading a transmit packet. This was fine for a network between two 8088-based computers where processing each packet and replying took 10's of msecs, but modern networks send back-to-back packets for almost every transaction. Having read this far, you must be persistent, so you get let in on a secret. As of pl13, some more of the hardware problems were "compensated for". Ie. in a fit of madness I wasted a whole day updating my 3c501 driver and then trying to track down a few more of the 3c501 glitches. It now works well enough to NFS mount filesystems, but the receiver still occasionally hangs. I'm mostly certain that this is a hardware bug. When it hangs, the next set of outgoing packets will reset the board, but that's only useful if you have something occasionally generating outgoing packets. I'll let this out for "pre-alpha" testing, under the following conditions: This is unsupported code. I know my usual copyright says all the code is unsupported, but this is _really_ unsupported. I DON'T want to see bug reports, and I'll accept bug fixes only if I'm in a good mood that day. I don't want to see a fest of "Linux ethercards for sale" postings. A bunch of people have bought dozens of "dumpster special" 3c501s, and they hope to sell them at rip-off prices. A 3c501 is barely worth the shipping cost, and if I see people trying to sell them here by claiming "supported by Linux" I _will_ flame them. They are _not_ supported by Linux. I don't want to be flamed later for putting out bad software. I don't know all all of the 3c501 bugs, and I know this driver only handles a few that I've been able to figure out. It has taken a long intense effort just to get the driver working this well. That said, ftp.super.org:/pub/linux/pl14/3c501.c Jumper your card to 0x280, add the 3c501.o to the OBJS line in net/inet/Makefile, uncomment the 3c501 line in linux/config.in, 'make config; make' as usual. AutoIRQ works, DMA isn't used, the autoprobe only looks at 0x280, the debug level is set with the third boot-time argument. You'll probably want to change the default EL_DEBUG to '2'. Once again, THE USE OF A 3c501 IS STRONGLY DISCOURAGED and it is NOT SUPPORTED BY LINUX. 3c505 An Intel-based ethercard with no driver available at present. (Not a very common card.) 3c507 This card uses one of the Intel chips, and the development of the driver is closely related to the development of the Intel Ether Express driver. An alpha driver is presently available. Expect to see the driver in the standard release of pl15. Technical information is available in section 5.06, and if you have experience in writing drivers, see section 5.07 as well. 2.02 Western Digital / SMC The ethernet part of Western Digital has been bought by SMC. The SMC Elite and SMC Elite Plus are the same as late-model WD8003 and WD8013 cards. Note that the SMC Elite Ultra is *not* the same as the plain SMC Elite / WD8013 card. (see below) Supported: WD8003, WD8013, SMC Elite, SMC Elite Plus A shared memory design by Western Digital. The 8 bit 8003 is slightly less expensive, but only worth the savings for light use. Over the years the design has added more registers and an EEPROM. Clones usually go by the '8013' name, and usually use a non-EEPROM (jumpered) design. This part of WD has been sold to SMC, so you'll usually see something like SMC/WD8013 or SMC Elite Plus (WD8013). The shared memory makes the cards 10-20% faster, especially with larger packets. More importantly (to me at least) it avoids a few bugs in the programmed-I/O mode of the 8390, allows safe multi-threaded access to the packet buffer, and doesn't have a programmed-I/O data register that hangs your machine during warm-boot probes. SMC Elite 16 ULTRA This ethercard is based on a new chip from SMC, with a few new features. While it has a mode that is similar to the older SMC ethercards, it's not compatible with the old WD80*3 drivers. However, in this mode it shares most of its code with the other 8390 drivers, while operating somewhat faster than a WD8013 clone. I'm considering writing a separate driver for the Ultra's "Altego" mode which allows chaining transmits at the cost of inefficient use of receive buffers, but that will probably not happen right away. Performance re-writes of working drivers are low priority unless there is some particular incentive or need. This is a new driver, made possible by documentation and ethercard loan from kamstra@ccmail.west.smc.com, Duke Kamstra. If you plan on using an Ultra with Linux send him a note of thanks to let him know that there are Linux users out there! If you would like to _ALPHA_ test this driver: ftp.super.org:/pub/linux/pl14/smc-ultra.c ftp.super.org:/pub/linux/pl14/Space.c You'll have to add an "Ultra" line to config.in and edit net/inet/Makefile. The Ultra driver will probably be (silently?) included in pl14. 2.03 NExxxx The prefix "NE" came from Novell Ethernet. Novell followed the cheapest NatSemi databook design and sold the manufacturing rights (spun off?) Eagle, just to get reasonably-priced ethercards into the market. Supported: NE1000, NE2000 The now-generic name for a bare-bones design around the NatSemi 8390. They use programmed I/O rather than shared memory, leading to easier installation but slightly lower performance and a few problems. Again, the savings of using an 8 bit NE1000 over the NE2000 are only warranted if you expect light use. Some recently introduced NE2000 clones use the National Semiconductor "AT/LANTic" 83905 chip, which offers a shared memory mode similar to the 8013 and EEPROM or software configuration. Some problems can arise with poor clones. See the question and answer section later in this document, and the section on clones. I have written a NE2000 diagnostic program, but it is still presently in alpha test. (ne2k) NE1500, NE2100 The AT1500 driver, recently added to the list of supported cards, also supports the NE1500, NE2100 and clones. The driver shipped with pl12 kernel doesn't detect non-AT1500 cards with autoprobe, but will work fine if you specify the base address explicitly and jumper for DMA channel 5. Read the Allied Telesis section for more information on LANCE based cards. 2.04 Hewlett Packard The 272** cards use programmed I/O, similar to the NE*000 boards, but the data transfer port can be "turned off" when you aren't accessing it, avoiding problems with autoprobing drivers. Thanks to Glenn Talbott for cleaning up the confusion in this section regarding the version numbers of the HP hardware, and adding lots of new info. Supported: 27245A 8 Bit 8390 based 10BaseT, not recommended for all the 8 bit reasons. It was re-designed a couple years ago to be highly integrated which caused some changes in initialization timing which only affected testing programs, not LAN drivers. (The new card is not 'ready' as soon after switching into and out of loopback mode.) 27247B, 27252A The 47B is a 16 Bit 8390 based 10BaseT w/AUI, and the 52A is a 16 Bit 8390 based ThinLAN w/AUI. These cards are high performers (3c509 speed) without the interrupt latency problems (32K onboard RAM for TX or RX packet buffering). They both offer LAN connector autosense, data I/O in I/O space (simpler) or memory mapped (faster), and soft configuration. 27247B was rated Best for ISA Servers by PC Mag this year. 27247A This is the older model that existed before the "B". Two versions 27247-60001 or 27247-60002 have part numbers marked on the card. Functionally the same to the LAN driver, except bits in ROM to identify boards differ. -60002 has a jumper to allow operation in non-standard ISA busses (chipsets that expect IOCHRDY early.) HP J2405A These are lower priced, and slightly faster than the 27247B/27252A, but are missing some features, such as AUI, ThinLAN connectivity, and boot PROM socket. This is a fairly generic LANCE design, but a minor design decision makes it incompatible with a generic "NE2100" driver. Special support for it (including reading the DMA channel from the board) should be in pl14 thanks to information provided by HP's Glenn Talbott, gt@hprnd.rose.hp.com. To use the pl12 and pl13 LANCE driver you must remove the outw(...RESET) calls that are commented "for old NE2100 designs", as these will change the board's base address(!). More information on LANCE based cards can be found in section 5.08. 2.05 D-Link Supported: DE-600 Laptop users and other folk who might want a quick way to put their computer onto the ethernet may want to use this. The driver is included with the default kernel source tree as of pl12 and possibly earlier. Bjorn Ekwall <bj0rn@blox.se> wrote the original. Expect about 80kb/s transfer speed from this via the parallel port. You should read the README.DLINK file in the kernel source tree. The latest release of this driver is v0.32, and it should be included in pl14 if all goes well. DE100, DE200, DE-220-T The manual says that it is 100% compatible with the NE2000. This is not true. You should call them and tell them you are using their card with Linux, and they should correct their documentation. Some pre-0.99pl12 driver versions may have trouble recognizing the DE2** series as 16 bit cards, and these cards are the most widely reported as having the spurious transfer address mismatch errors. Unsupported: DE-620 Same as the DE-600, only with two output formats. Bjorn writes: "I have still no information on the DE-620 that I can include in this release. (Maybe someone well connected to D-Link sees this, hint, hint, hint...) 2.06 Cabletron Yes, another one of these companies that won't release its programming information. They waited for months before actually confirming that all their information was proprietary. If you feel like asking them why they don't want to release their info so that people can use their cards, write to pkelly@ctron.com. You should read section 9.1 of this document, as it has specific information pertaining to Cabletron. Supported: (...well, not *really* supported) E10**, E10**-x, E20**, E20**-x These are NEx000 almost-clones that are reported to work with the standard NEx000 drivers, thanks to a ctron-specific check during the probe. If there are any problems, they are unlikely to be fixed, as the programming information is unavailable. Unsupported: E21** Again, there is not much one can do when the programming information is proprietary. Feel free to ask pkelly@ctron.com. This is the only 8390-based ethercard series that isn't supported by Linux. 2.07 Allied Telesis Allied Telesis is the worlds largest maker of separate transceivers thanks to their low prices, and they now have a series of low-cost ethercards using the 79C960 version of the AMD LANCE. These are bus-master cards, and thus probably the fastest ISA bus ethercards available (although the 3c509 has lower latency thanks to predictive interrupts). Supported: AT1500 The driver for the AT1500 series is new in the 0.99pl12 kernel, but it won't work "out-of-the-box" with >16M machines. (NB This isn't a fundamental limitation, so stop pointing and laughing at the ISA bus. The driver just needs a hook to allocate low-memory buffers for the bus-master DMA, and should be just as fast on >16M systems. It can be easily fixed by initializing the LANCE driver with the character devices, but this fix depends on the resolution of the networking code uncertainty.) For those inquiring about using bus-master LANCE boards with >16M systems, I've been working on that recently. I borrowed 16M from another system here at work, and am using the resulting 32M system while typing this message. The bad news is that the modified driver uses a very ugly interface, and I'm unlikely to have it cleaned up and tested in time for pl14. This driver should also work with NE1500 and NE2100 clones. The pl12 version, included with SLS1.03, is named "le0" rather than "eth0" and it requires the base address to be specified if you don't have a real AT1500. You might be able to use it as easily as using the boot line: lilo: linux ether=0,0x320,le0 (change 0x320 to your true base address) and then changing "eth0" to "le0" in /etc/rc.net. Your DMA channel must be set at DMA5, but autoIRQ does work. The 0.99pl13 driver should be able to autoprobe for your ethercard at the locations {0x300, 0x320, 0x340, 0x360}. Also, the driver is now named "eth0" by default. Future driver versions may figure out a way to autoDMA. Although there is no autoDMA (until I verify that autoDMA is safe and reliable), some versions (pl13) allow passing the DMA channel at boot-time via LILO. (Boot-time parameters can be made permanent in LILO v13+, read the docs.) The DMA channel otherwise defaults to DMA5. Please report the exact chip used by your ethercard, and any success or failure you have. This driver is still young, and I've gotten few reports. More information on AMD LANCE based Ethernet cards can be found in section 5.08. AT1700 The Allied Telesis AT1700 series ethercards are based on the Fujitsu MB86965. This chip uses a programmed I/O interface, and a pair of fixed-size tranmit buffers. This allows small groups of packets to sent be sent back-to-back, with a short pause while switching buffers. A unique feature is the ability to drive 150ohm STP (Shielded Twisted Pair) cable commonly installed for Token Ring, in addition to 10baseT 100ohm UTP (unshielded twisted pair). A mis-feature to watch out for is that the current production version silently wires to DMA channel 5, rendering it useless. No device driver will be written using DMA if installing a second card into the machine breaks both, and only way to disble the DMA is with a knife. The at1700 driver is in alpha test, and will probably be released with the pl14 kernel. 2.08 Arcnet There is no Arcnet driver for Linux. Feel free to write a driver. With the very low cost and better performance of ethernet, I expect that most places will be giving away their Arcnet hardware for free, resulting in a lot of home systems with Arcnet. An advantage of Arcnet is that all of the cards have identical interfaces, so once a driver is available it will work for everyone. 2.09 Digital / DEC Supported: DE200-64k, DE200-32k, DE202, DE100, DEPCA rev E Peter Bauer has written a driver for the older DEPCA models. Look for depca-0.7.tar.z -- It patches against pl13. This will allow you to use any of the above cards. FvK is currently trying to arrange integration of this driver into pl14, so you *may* not need this file after pl13. If you are using this driver, Peter would like to hear from you. His e-mail addr. is near the start of this document. Peter had this to say about all the DEPCA cards: "In this thing I'll document my knowledge about the digital ethernet boards for PC's: There exist lots of different hardware-releases of ethernet boards of DEC, all subsumed under the keyword 'DEPCA'. All these boards are more or less compatible as they all seem to use some chip called "Lance". The hardware of these cards and the programing of them is documented in a manual purchasable from DEC (about $70 -- I had the order number some months ago, but lost it...)" Unsupported: Digital Etherlink III Again, Peter Bauer said that "the new etherlink III seems to be a break: No official docu from DEC as far as today, other (incompatible??) hardware used, and (no joke) (at least for the first delivered cards) also a sharp knife necessary to get the card working (needs cut of some irq lines ...) As far as I know, lots of DEC Employees use Linux (at least for hobby purposes) and the depca-driver, because its a de-facto standard in DEC, so I encourage any DEC-employee reading this to check wether my writing is true, and to support sources of information about the etherworks-III." 2.10 Intel Ethernet Cards Supported: Ether Express This card uses the intel i82586. An alpha driver is available. Expect to see the driver in the standard release of pl15. 2.11 PureData Supported: PDUC8028, PDI8023 The PureData PDUC8028 and PDI8023 series of cards are reported to work, thanks to special probe code contributed by Mike Jagdis <jaggy@purplet.demon.co.uk>. The support is integrated with the WD driver. 2.12 Xircom Another group that won't release documentation. No cards supported. Don't look for any support in the future unless they release their programming information. And this is highly unlikely, as they *forbid* you from even reverse- engineering their drivers. Here is some of the results from people who have tried to deal with Xircom. "I had no end of problems trying to work with Xircom. After spending months talking to them and working up a prospectus, I was told that no information would be forthcoming and that they were not interested in markets other than the ISA/DOS market. (I was trying to interface the pocket adapters to an Amiga). I won't work with them anymore and I won't recommend their products to anyone." "They (Xircom) won't give it (programming info.) out. BSDI was able to get the spec and write a driver for it, but only by promising not to give out the source." You might also be interested in reading section 9.2 2.13 Zenith The built-in Z-Note network adaptor is based on the Intel i82593 using two DMA channels. There might be a driver for it in early 1994. See section 5.06 for more information. 2.14 Racal-Interlan There is an alpha driver for the NI5210 floating about. (last seen on tsx-11.mit.edu /pub/linux/ALPHA/ni/ni52.tar.gz) This card also uses one of the Intel chips. See section 5.06 for more information. 2.15 AMD LANCE (79C960) There really is no AMD ethernet card. You are probably reading this because the only markings you could find on your card said AMD and the above number. The above number refers to a chip from AMD that is the heart of many ethernet cards. See the section on the Allied Telesis AT1500, the NE1500/2100 and the information in section 5.08. Chances are that the existing LANCE driver will work with all AMD LANCE based cards. 2.16 AT-Lan-Tec AT-Lan-Tec pocket ethernet adaptor: This is a generic, low-cost OEM pocket adaptor being sold by AT-Lan-Tec, and (likely) a number of other suppliers. A driver is in progress, but not yet complete (-djb 11/9/93). 3. Clones of popular Ethernet cards. Due to the popular design of some cards, different companies will make "clones" or replicas of the original card. However, one must be careful, as some of these clones are not 100% compatible, and can be troublesome. Some common problems with "not-quite-clones" are noted in the question and answer section of this document. 3.1 WD80x3 clones The following clones are reported to work with the standard WD80x3 driver: AT-LAN-TEC 8013 PureData (not a 8013 clone, but the 8013 driver has special code) LANNET LEC-45 PE-8013 (WD-8013 Compatible) 3.2 NE2000 clones The following clones are reported to work with the standard NE2000 driver: Accton NE2000 (might not get detected at boot, see section 6) Alta Combo NE2000 clone Aritsoft LANtastic AE-2 (OK, but has flawed error-reporting registers) Asante Etherpak 2001/2003 AT-LAN-TEC NE2000 clone (uses Winbond chip that traps SCSI drivers) Cabletron products: E10**, E10**-x, E20**, E20**-x Cnet UTP 10baseT (NE 2000 emulation) D-Link Ethernet II (bad clones, but the driver checks for them) 4-Dimension FD0490 EtherBoard16 LTC E-NET/16 P/N: 8300-200-002 (lipka@lip.hanse.de) Network Solutions HE-203 SIIG Inc E-Lan/200 (NE 2000 comp.) SVEC 4 Dimension Ethernet 4. Cables, coax, twisted pairs etc. If you are starting a network from scratch, it's considerably less expensive to use thin ethernet, RG58 co-ax cable with BNC connectors, than old-fashioned thick ethernet, RG-5 cable with N connectors, or 10baseT, twisted pair telco-style cables with RJ-45 "phone" connectors. 4.01 Thin Ethernet (thinnet) Thin ethernet is the "ether of choice". The cable is inexpensive. If you are making your own cables solid-core RG58A is $0.09/ft. and stranded RG58AU is $0.15/ft. Twist-on BNC connectors are < $2 ea., and other misc. pieces are similarly inexpensive. It is essential that you properly terminate each end of the cable with 50 ohm terminators, so budget $2 ea. for a pair. It's also vital that your cable have no "stubs" -- the 'T' connectors must be attached directly to the ethercards. 4.02 Twisted pair Twisted pair networks require active hubs, which start around $250, and the raw cable cost can actually be higher than thinnet. They are usually sold using the claim that you can use your existing telephone wiring, but it's a rare installation where that turns out to be the case. The claim that you can upgrade to higher speeds is also suspect, as most proposed schemes use higher-grade (read $$) cable and more sophisticated termination ($$$) than you would likely install on speculation. On the other hand, hubs are rapidly dropping in price, all 100Mb/sec ethernet proposals use twisted pair, and most new business installations use twisted pair. 4.03 Thick Ethernet Thick ethernet is mostly obsolete, and is usually used only to remain compatible with an existing implementation. You can stretch the rules and connect short spans of thick and thin ethernet together with a passive $3 N-to-BNC connector, and that's often the best solution to expanding an existing thicknet. A correct (but expensive) solution is to use a repeater in this case. [End part 1/2]