Fix for "No MII traceiver found!"?

[Kevin Traas]

Greetings,

I've searched/browsed the archives and found *tons* of references to the
subject problem, but few, very few, replies about how to fix / get
around the problem.  Please read on and provide any assistance you can.
TIA.

I've got a whole box of Kingston KNE100TX cards that I'd like to use in
a bunch of Linux boxes that I'm setting up.  I'd originally tried some
of these cards with the 0.89h and then 0.90zzz... drivers.  Some worked
fine, some ended up with the subject MII tranceiver problem.  I'm now
using the 0.91g and if the card works, everything's great.  However, any
card that has given me the problem, continues to do so.

These cards used to work; however, the tulip driver (older versions, I'm
thinking) have somehow changed the eeprom settings and have effectively
"wrecked" the card.  The tulip driver now loads still; however, the card
will not pass data (ifconfig shows interface, mac addr, etc.; however
all values are zero, i.e. TX, RX, etc.).  The card driver also won't
load under ... Windows....

I've done what I can with what was available (mii-diag, tulip-diag,
tulip debug/options, etc.) and haven't been able to figure out how to
get these cards working again.   There must be a way, right?

I've tried the emergency eeprom rewrite and Save/Load of eeprom from
good to bad card but neither worked.

I notice there's a -w option to tulip-diag; however, what/how can
I write to the eeprom?

There must be a way I can reset these cards to "factory".  I certainly
don't want to garbage them....

One thing I've noticed from tulip-diag -mm is that the NWay Status
Register is c6 for all cards that work - and c4 for all the cards that
don't.  Does this have any relevance?  If so, can I manually reset this
register?  If so, how?

Below is my diag output with, hopefully, helpful information.

Please help in any way you can.

Regards,
Kevin Traas


# ./mii-diag -v
mii-diag.c:v1.07 10/14/99  Donald Becker (becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov)
 MII PHY #32 transceiver registers:
   1000 784c 0000 0000 01e1 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000.
 Basic mode control register 0x1000: Auto-negotiation enabled.
 You have link beat, and everything is working OK.
   This transceiver is capable of  100baseTx-FD 100baseTx 10baseT-FD
10baseT.
   Able to perform Auto-negotiation, negotiation not complete.
 Your link partner does not do autonegotiation, and this transceiver
type
  does not report the sensed link speed.
 MII PHY #32 transceiver registers:
   1000 784c 0000 0000 01e1 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000.
 Basic mode control register 0x1000: Auto-negotiation enabled.
 Basic mode status register 0x784c ... 784c.
   Link status: established.
   Capable of  100baseTx-FD 100baseTx 10baseT-FD 10baseT.
   Able to perform Auto-negotiation, negotiation not complete.
 This transceiver has no vendor identification.
 I'm advertising 01e1: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx 10baseT-FD 10baseT
   Advertising no additional info pages.
   IEEE 802.3 CSMA/CD protocol.
 Link partner capability is 0000:.
   Negotiation did not complete.

# ./tulip-diag -mm
tulip-diag.c:v1.19 10/2/99 Donald Becker (becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Index #1: Found a Digital DS21143 Tulip adapter at 0xd000.
 Port selection is 10mpbs-serial, full-duplex.
 Transmit stopped, Receive stopped, full-duplex.
  The Rx process state is 'Stopped'.
  The Tx process state is 'Stopped'.
  The transmit threshold is 72.
  The NWay status register is 000000c4.
   No MII transceivers found!
  Internal autonegotiation state is 'Autonegotiation disabled'.

# ./tulip-diag -aa
tulip-diag.c:v1.19 10/2/99 Donald Becker (becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Index #1: Found a Digital DS21143 Tulip adapter at 0xd000.
Digital DS21143 Tulip chip registers at 0xd000:
  f8000000 ffffffff ffffffff e6dfdaff ffa7beff f0000000 b2420200
f3fe0000
  e0000000 ffffcbf8 ffffffff 00000000 000000c4 ffff0000 fffbffff
8ff00008
 Port selection is 10mpbs-serial, full-duplex.
 Transmit stopped, Receive stopped, full-duplex.
  The Rx process state is 'Stopped'.
  The Tx process state is 'Stopped'.
  The transmit threshold is 72.
  The NWay status register is 000000c4.
  Internal autonegotiation state is 'Autonegotiation disabled'.