[tulip] Cannot force media type on Netgear FA310TX

Jason Zwolak jzwolak@vt.edu
Mon, 1 Jan 2001 17:45:40 -0500


I am running Debian 2.2, kernel 2.2.17, AMD Duron 600, Biostar MB (M7VKB) w/
the Via chipset.

I'm trying to force the media type for my Netgear FA310TX with the following
command:
	
	tulip-diag -f -F 10baseT

And it does not work.  The output of the command is:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tulip-diag.c:v2.04 9/26/2000 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
 http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
Index #1: Found a Lite-On 82c168 PNIC adapter at 0xdc00.
 Port selection is 100mbps-SYM/PCS 100baseTx scrambler, half-duplex.
 Transmit started, Receive started, half-duplex.
  The Rx process state is 'Waiting for packets'.
  The Tx process state is 'Idle'.
  The transmit unit is set to store-and-forward.
 Use '-a' or '-aa' to show device registers,
     '-e' to show EEPROM contents, -ee for parsed contents,
  or '-m' or '-mm' to show MII management registers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



If I down the network then do the following...

Type tulip-diag -a and get:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tulip-diag.c:v2.04 9/26/2000 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
 http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
Index #1: Found a Lite-On 82c168 PNIC adapter at 0xdc00.
Lite-On 82c168 PNIC chip registers at 0xdc00:
  00008000 01ff0000 62df5975 00319810 00319a10 06000132 01a6c000 00000000
  00000000 00000000 00319ae0 00319ae0 0000003d 00000000 00000000 10000000
  00000000 f0000000 f0041385 000000bf 40020000 00319810 03d0d010 0201f868
  00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
 Port selection is 100mbps-SYM/PCS 100baseTx scrambler, half-duplex.
 Transmit stopped, Receive stopped, half-duplex.
  The Rx process state is 'Stopped'.
  The Tx process state is 'Stopped'.
  The transmit unit is set to store-and-forward.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Type ifconfig eth0 netmask 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.100
Then tulip-diag -a and get:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tulip-diag.c:v2.04 9/26/2000 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
 http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
Index #1: Found a Lite-On 82c168 PNIC adapter at 0xdc00.
 * A potential Tulip chip has been found, but it appears to be active.
 * Either shutdown the network, or use the '-f' flag to see all values.
 Port selection is 100mbps-SYM/PCS 100baseTx scrambler, half-duplex.
 Transmit started, Receive started, half-duplex.
  The Rx process state is 'Waiting for packets'.
  The Tx process state is 'Idle'.
  The transmit unit is set to store-and-forward.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



So far so good.  But my hub (or network cable) is not very good at transmitting
at 100baseT, so all my network cards are set to 10baseT (I have a 10/100 hub).
The way I do this (I have all Linux boxes) is I use the mii-diag program to
force them all to 10baseT like this:

	mii-diag -F 10baseT-HD

I do that for every card on the network and everything works.

So I do that with my Netgear card and get:

	Using the default interface 'eth0'.
	SIOCGMIIPHY on eth0 failed: No such device

I explicitly aliased eth0 to tulip in my modules.conf file.  The Netgear card
shows up as eth0 when I do an ifconfig.
So I try tulip-diag -f -F 10baseT and get what I have at the top of this
message.  Also I tried media types of 10baseT-HD and 10baseT-FD and get the
same response.

Feel free to suggest the obvious... last time I had a problem like this I had
typed 10BaseT instead of 10baseT.  It took me a whole weekend to not figure
that out and it took Donald Becker 20 minutes or 2 hours (I cannot remember
which) to figure it out for me, sorry Donald.
-- 
Jason Zwolak
http://jason.zwolak.org/