Questions/Suggestions for the driver

[Oliver Sturm]

Hi all,

I'm  using  the  newest  version  of the vortex driver to drive a 3com
905b Tx card at 100 mbit across a crosslink cable (is that the correct
english name?). I had the following problem:

My  communications  partner  is  a Windows 98 machine with a DEC 21143
card.  The  driver  for  that  card  doesn't  load  at all, because (I
suppose)  it  can't  find  a  link  beat when  trying to initialize in
100mbit  mode.  On the linux side the same problem occured: the driver
was loaded and stayed in 10mbit mode or, if I gave it "options=12", it
switched  back  to 10mbit mode immediately saying it didn't get a link
beat.

I solved the problem (temporarily) by using the same 3com 905b Tx card
on  the  Windows  side.  The 3com driver for Windows also allows me to
select  100mbit  mode,  but  with an important difference: the card is
initialized  in  that  mode _and stays so_. So, when loading the linux
module  with  the Windows machine already running, it _can_ initialize
in 100mbit mode without any problems.

The  problem  seams  to be that when detecting no link beat, the linux
and  the  Windows drivers react in different ways: linux switches down
to 10mbit while Windows stays in 100mbit mode.

Question:  Is  there  any way I missed to tell the linux driver not to
fall back to the slower connection when the link beat isn't there?

Suggestion:  If not, is there any reason not to implement it? (I would
even  do  that  myself,  but  didn't  want to start hacking the driver
before asking ;)

Sorry for the long explanations.

Oliver Sturm

--
Oliver Sturm / <sturm@oliver-sturm.de>

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