.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1996, Fred Gray
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
.\"    must display the following acknowledgement:
.\"     This product includes software developed by David Greenman.
.\" 4. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products
.\"    derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
.\"
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
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.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
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.\" $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man4/man4.i386/vx.4,v 1.24.10.1.6.1 2010/12/21 17:09:25 kensmith Exp $
.\"
.Dd July 16, 2005
.Dt VX 4 i386
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm vx
.Nd "3Com EtherLink III / Fast EtherLink III (3c59x) Ethernet driver"
.Sh SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel,
place the following line in your
kernel configuration file:
.Bd -ragged -offset indent
.Cd "device vx"
.Ed
.Pp
Alternatively, to load the driver as a
module at boot time, place the following line in
.Xr loader.conf 5 :
.Bd -literal -offset indent
if_vx_load="YES"
.Ed
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
driver provides support for the 3Com
.Dq Vortex
chipset.
.Pp
The medium selection
can be influenced by the following link flags to the
.Xr ifconfig 8
command:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width LINK0X -compact
.It Em link0
Use the AUI port.
.It Em link1
Use the BNC port.
.It Em link2
Use the UTP port.
.El
.Sh HARDWARE
The
.Nm
driver supports the following cards:
.Pp
.Bl -bullet -compact
.It
3Com 3c590 EtherLink III PCI
.It
3Com 3c592 EtherLink III EISA
.It
3Com 3c595 Fast EtherLink III PCI in 10 Mbps mode
.It
3Com 3c597 Fast EtherLink III EISA in 10 Mbps mode
.El
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
.Bl -diag
.It "vx%d: not configured; kernel is built for only %d devices."
There are not enough devices in the kernel configuration file for the number
of adapters present in the system.
Add devices to the configuration file,
rebuild the kernel, and reboot.
.El
.Pp
All other diagnostics indicate either a hardware problem or a bug in the
driver.
.Sh CAVEATS
Some early-revision 3c590 cards are defective and suffer from many receive
overruns, which cause lost packets.
The author has attempted to implement
a test for it based on the information supplied by 3Com, but the test resulted
mostly in spurious warnings.
.Pp
The performance of this driver is somewhat limited by the fact that it uses
only polled-mode I/O and does not make use of the bus-mastering capability
of the cards.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr arp 4 ,
.Xr netintro 4 ,
.Xr ng_ether 4 ,
.Xr ifconfig 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
device driver first appeared in
.Fx 2.1 .
It was derived from the
.Nm ep
driver, from which it inherits most of its limitations.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
The
.Nm
device driver and this manual page were written by
.An Fred Gray Aq fgray@rice.edu ,
based on the work of
.An Herb Peyerl
and with the assistance of numerous others.
.Sh BUGS
The
.Nm
driver is known not to reset the adapter correctly following a warm boot
on some systems.
.Pp
The
.Nm
driver has not been exhaustively tested with all the models of cards that it
claims to support.