[tulip] Extremely stubborn 21143

[Donald Becker]

On Wed, 18 Oct 2000, Jon.Hinks wrote:

> Thanks for responding. I was in the middle of typing up a reply on one
> machine and getting all the req'd info on another- when suddenly it started
> working! As per your suggestion, I did `mii-diag -r` at the command line-
> didn't even need to take the network down. Now pings to and from the box are
> fine. Many thanks for this. So, what have I done here?

The 'mii-diag -r' command restarts autonegotiation on the active
transceiver.  A side effect is that it also connects it to the MII data path.
This should never be necessary for a single on-board transceiver.

> One thing I notice is
> that these commands need to be issued every time after powering up. What is
> the 'permanent' solution? Can this be done without mii-diag?

You could modify the driver, but otherwise you will just have to run
'mii-diag'.  Your board is non-standard, and activating transceivers
willy-nilly might break some other board.

> > What type of hardware do you have?
> > It sounds like an early not-quite-right prototype board.
> 
> Digital 21143-PA
> A9640 L52948-04
> 
> It is I believe, a CNET, although is not obviously branded on the card. This
> is, however, reported as part of the MAC addr on our server when the box in
> running in Windows mode.

Where did this card come from?
What transceiver does it use?
(I still believe that this was a prototype board, or used a "engineering
sample" transceiver not intended for production use.)

> >> ` mii-diag -v` produces:
>  MII PHY #0 transceiver registers:
>    3400 782d ffff ffff 01e1 0081 0000 ffff
>    ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff
>    ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff
>    ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff c200.
>  Basic mode control register 0x3400: Auto-negotiation enabled.
>   Transceiver isolated from the MII!
...
>  This transceiver has no vendor identification.

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