[vortex] media sepection

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Sun, 25 Feb 2001, Andrew Morton wrote:

> We don't do that.  In fact, we don't do lots of things
> which the doc says.

Well, this is in fact the most important issue! I offered some time ago to
completely re-write the media selection code, following the docs, and I
didn't receive any answer...

> The `available media' bits will tell us if it's present.  The xcvrSelect
> field of internalconfig tells us which one to start with.

This means "based on EEPROM settings" style. As long as we don't have a
fool-proof tool to allow changing this settings in Linux (something like
the 3Com DOS utility), I really don't see the point!

I have no ideea how older cards give these informations; my ideea
for the re-write was to use current style setting for older cards (which
works, instead of reading tons of docs which might not be valid in real
world) and use the documented style for modern (probably Boomerang and
Cyclone/Tornado or only the last ones) cards. As I didn't pursue this
further, I have no ideea if it's doable in this form.

> In the 2.2 driver I have simply added HAS_NWAY to the PCI table.  There
> are probably other entries which need this.  We'll see.
...
> This is kinda kludgy, but it's better than having me sitting
> here and basically guessing which NICS support NWAY.  And the `mediaoptions'
> register doesn't tell us...

My impression was that it's safe to add HAS_NWAY to _all_ Cyclone/Tornado
based cards, because the NWAY logic is on-chip. As Don said, maybe
Cardbus cards might need this changed to only HAS_MII to use their HomePNA
interface, but I think this would be easy to find out.

All modern cards (not only 3Com) that I know of have MII interfaces;
adding HAS_MII is already a big step compared to nothing. Probably, most
Cyclone/Tornado cards should work even set like this.

Sincerely,

Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu@IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De