NAME¶
le
—
AMD Am7900 LANCE and Am79C9xx ILACC/PCnet Ethernet
interface driver
SYNOPSIS¶
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your kernel
configuration file:
device le
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following
line in
loader.conf(5):
For C-Bus non-PnP adapters, the port address and the IRQ number have to be
specified in
/boot/device.hints:
hint.le.0.at="isa"
hint.le.0.port="0x03d0"
hint.le.0.irq="6"
For ISA non-PnP adapters, the port address as well as the IRQ and the DRQ
numbers have to be specified in
/boot/device.hints:
hint.le.0.at="isa"
hint.le.0.port="0x280"
hint.le.0.irq="10"
hint.le.0.drq="0"
DESCRIPTION¶
The
le
driver provides support for Ethernet
adapters based on the AMD Am7990 and Am79C90 (CMOS, pin-compatible) Local Area
Network Controller for Ethernet (LANCE) chips.
The
le
driver also supports Ethernet adapters
based on the AMD Am79C900 Integrated Local Area Communications Controller
(ILACC) as well as the Am79C9xx PCnet family of chips, which are single-chip
implementations of a LANCE chip and a DMA engine. This includes a superset of
the PCI bus Ethernet chips supported by the
pcn(4) driver. The
le
driver treats all of these PCI bus
Ethernet chips as an AMD Am79C970 PCnet-PCI and does not support the
additional features like the MII bus and burst mode of AMD Am79C971 PCnet-FAST
and greater chips. Thus the
pcn(4) driver should
be preferred for the latter.
Generally, the
le
driver aims at supporting
as many different chips on as many different platforms as possible, partially
at the cost of the best performance with some of these.
The
le
driver supports reception and
transmission of extended frames for
vlan(4).
Selective reception of multicast Ethernet frames is provided by a 64-bit mask;
multicast destination addresses are hashed to a bit entry using the Ethernet
CRC function.
HARDWARE¶
C-Bus and ISA¶
The
le
driver supports C-Bus and ISA bus
Ethernet adapters which are based on the following chips:
- AMD Am7990 and Am79C90 LANCE
- AMD Am79C960 PCnet-ISA
- AMD Am79C961 PCnet-ISA+
- AMD Am79C961A PCnet-ISA II
This includes support for the following Ethernet adapters:
C-Bus non-PnP:
ISA non-PnP:
- BICC Isolan
- Novell NE2100
ISA PnP:
- AMD AM1500T/AM2100
- AMD PCnet-32
- AMD PCnet-ISA
- Allied Telesyn AT-1500
- Boca LANCard Combo
- Cabletron E2100 Series DNI
- Cabletron E2200 Single Chip
- Melco Inc. LGY-IV
- Novell NE2100
- Racal InterLan EtherBlaster
The
le
driver does not support the selection
of media types and options via
ifconfig(8) with
C-Bus and ISA bus Ethernet adapters.
PCI¶
The PCI bus Ethernet chips supported by the
le
driver are:
- AMD Am53C974/Am79C970/Am79C974 PCnet-PCI
- AMD Am79C970A PCnet-PCI II
- AMD Am79C971 PCnet-FAST
- AMD Am79C972 PCnet-FAST+
- AMD Am79C973/Am79C975 PCnet-FAST III
- AMD Am79C976 PCnet-PRO
- AMD Am79C978 PCnet-Home
This includes support for the following Ethernet adapters:
- AcerLAN NIC P20
- Allied Telesyn AT-2450 and AT-2700 series
- VMware emulated AMD Am79C970A PCnet-PCI II interface
The
le
driver supports the selection of the
following media types via
ifconfig(8) with PCI
bus Ethernet adapters:
autoselect
- Enable autoselection of the media type.
10baseT/UTP
- Select UTP media.
10base5/AUI
- Select AUI/BNC media.
The following media option is supported with these media types:
full-duplex
- Select full duplex operation.
Note that unlike the
pcn(4) driver, the
le
driver does not support selecting
100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) media types.
sparc64¶
The
le
driver supports the on-board LANCE
interfaces found in Sun Ultra 1 machines. The
le
driver allows the selection of the
following media types via
ifconfig(8) with these
on-board interfaces:
autoselect
- Enable autoselection of the media type.
10baseT/UTP
- Select UTP media.
10base5/AUI
- Select AUI media.
When using autoselection, a default media type is selected for use by examining
all ports for carrier. The first media type with which a carrier is detected
will be selected. Additionally, if carrier is dropped on a port, the driver
will switch between the possible ports until one with carrier is found.
The
le
driver also supports the following Sun
SBus Ethernet add-on adapters:
- SCSI HBA and Buffered Ethernet (SBE/S, P/N 501-1869)
- Fast SCSI and Buffered Ethernet (FSBE/S, P/N 501-2015 and 501-2981)
The
le
driver does not support the selection
of media types and options via
ifconfig(8) with
SBus Ethernet add-on adapters.
For further information on configuring media types and options, see
ifconfig(8).
DIAGNOSTICS¶
- le%d: overflow
- More packets came in from the Ethernet than there was space in the LANCE
receive buffers. Packets were missed.
- le%d: receive buffer error
- The LANCE ran out of buffer space, packet dropped.
- le%d: lost carrier
- The Ethernet carrier disappeared during an attempt to transmit. The LANCE
will finish transmitting the current packet, but will not automatically
retry transmission if there is a collision.
- le%d: excessive collisions, tdr %d
- The Ethernet was extremely busy or jammed, outbound packets were dropped
after 16 attempts to retransmit.
TDR is the abbreviation of “Time Domain Reflectometry”. The
optionally reported TDR value is an internal counter of the interval
between the start of a transmission and the occurrence of a collision.
This value can be used to determine the distance from the Ethernet tap to
the point on the Ethernet cable that is shorted or open
(unterminated).
- le%d: dropping chained buffer
- A packet did not fit into a single receive buffer and was dropped. Since
the
le
driver allocates buffers large
enough to receive maximum sized Ethernet packets, this means some other
station on the LAN transmitted a packet larger than allowed by the
Ethernet standard.
- le%d: transmit buffer error
- The LANCE ran out of buffer space before finishing the transmission of a
packet. If this error occurs, the driver software has a bug.
- le%d: underflow
- The LANCE ran out of buffer space before finishing the transmission of a
packet. If this error occurs, the driver software has a bug.
- le%d: controller failed to initialize
- Driver failed to start the LANCE. This is potentially a hardware
failure.
- le%d: memory error
- RAM failed to respond within the timeout when the LANCE wanted to read or
write it. This is potentially a hardware failure.
- le%d: receiver disabled
- The receiver of the LANCE was turned off due to an error.
- le%d: transmitter disabled
- The transmitter of the LANCE was turned off due to an error.
SEE ALSO¶
altq(4),
arp(4),
intro(4),
netintro(4),
pcn(4),
vlan(4),
ifconfig(8)
HISTORY¶
The
le
driver was ported from
NetBSD and first appeared in
FreeBSD
6.1. The
NetBSD version in turn was derived
from the
le
driver which first appeared in
4.4BSD.
AUTHORS¶
The
le
driver was ported by
Marius Strobl
⟨marius@FreeBSD.org⟩.