[tulip] AT-2800TX, I give up

Donald Becker becker@scyld.com
Wed Feb 20 12:38:00 2002


On Wed, 20 Feb 2002, Gert Doering wrote:

> I have been bugging Allied Telesyn for documentation, but the customer 
> support is stupid and unwilling - "we no linux driver, go away".  Will
> keep trying.

They won't have real documentation.  Anything they do have will be so
limited and obscure that they won't want to let someone from the outside
see it.

The primary information we need to know is the type of transceiver the
card uses.  Even the transceiver chip number would allow us to find out
if it really is a MII transceiver or a SYM transceiver.

> > > eth0: Digital DS21143-xD Tulip rev 65 at 0xc80cc000, 00:A0:D2:AF:49:60, IRQ 9.
...
> > > eth0: Digital DS21143 Tulip transmit timed out, status f0260000, SIA 000000c6 ffff0000 fffbff7f 8ff10008, resetting...

We might be able to tell something by seeing if any of the status bits
change when the link cable or dongle is disconnected.  Use 'tulip-diag
-af' to see the bit state.

If the reset sequence is correct, bit 0x00080000 of CSR15 is a
general purpose input.  It normally is Input Link Status for "OnNow"
support.

> > This reports a normal MII transceiver, with a reset sequence.  This table
> > looks as if it was written for this card.  The usual way for the designer
> 
> So what do you suggest how to proceed?

Last night I modified the 'tulip-diag' program to reset the transceiver using
the EEPROM table.  Run it as 'tulip-diag  --reset -amm' to send a reset
to the control pins, and see if the transceiver is detected.

The hacked version is at
      ftp://www.scyld.com/pub/network/tulip-diag.c

Do not redistribute this version of tulip-diag as it is not a regular,
checked-in release.  I'll remove it from the FTP site in a few days. 

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