[vortex] Linux kernel driver vs. others

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Sun, 23 Jun 2002, Jeff Tucker wrote:

> This might be obvious to others but it is not to me. It appears that there 
> are at least two versions (possibly three) of the driver known as 3c59x.c.
> - Donald Becker's

Yes, but this driver needs some support functions found in pci-scan.[ch] 
also found on the Scyld site. It should also work with older kernel
versions.

> - The driver included in Linux 2.4.18, which obviously was split from the 
> above driver at some time in the past

Yes, but over time some features from Donald's driver were ported to this 
one.

> - A driver referred to as the "Costescu-Morton development series" on the 
> Scyld website. The link provided there is dead. It's unclear to me whether 
> or not this is actually the same as the Linux kernel driver.

Andrew - maintainer of the kernel 3c59x driver - kept on the site some 
versions of the driver with some added features for testing. One of them 
added by me was for a different way of treating DMA transfers, but, as it 
was a new feature and quite a radical one and came at some "freezing" 
point in kernel development, Andrew didn't want to submit it for inclusion 
in the official kernel and so it was kept as an external one for the 
moment; this feature is now used by default on capable cards with Donald's 
driver. However, during the last months I was very busy with other things 
and couldn't test and keep up to date with the newer kernel versions, so 
this driver became obsolete.

> If I have high-volume production servers using 3C905 and 3C982 cards,
> which driver should I use? Stability and reliability are paramount.
> Speed is nice too.

I think that both the kernel and Donald's driver should be stable and 
reliable. The speed should be the same as they use the same mechanism with
respect to interrupts.

-- 
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