[vortex-bug] 3c905CX-TXM - One machine now works, one machine doesn't

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, Garnet Chaney wrote:

> BTW, The machine that is working is only using a timeout value of 1,500,000.
> With the non-working machine I've went all the way up to 4,000,000 without
> fixing it.....   Could the fact that the machines are now on an active
> network (with some collissions 1-3 a second) be affecting the startup of one
> of the cards, but not the other?

As you might have seen in the recent thread, these are new cards that
don't follow the same rules as the old cards. As there is nothing in the
docs regarding them, we can only guess and come up with approximate fixes
like the one that you mentioned; this is not a correct solution, but it's
the only one that exists right now.

Richard Gooch, who also owns some CX cards, was expected to give some
statistics about loop counts needed for different operations. If you say
that one works with 1.5M, use this in both drivers.

> Nonworking machine:
>           TX packets:46957 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:46957

This is the problem................................................^^^^^

> kernel: eth0: 3Com 3c905C Tornado at 0x2800,  00:01:03:27:08:a7, IRQ 18
> kernel:   MII transceiver found at address 24, status 7809.

...but this is not the same card as the first one. All CX cards that I
have seen until now don't report the MII transceiver correctly, while this
one does.
Please run 'vortex-diag -v' after ifconfig (or network start) to check for
manufacturing date and code.

> # ./mii-diag
> Using the default interface 'eth0'.
> Basic registers of MII PHY #24:  3000 7809 0041 6800 05e1 0000 0005 2001.
>  Basic mode control register 0x3000: Auto-negotiation enabled.
>  Basic mode status register 0x7809 ... 7809.
>    Link status: not established.

This indicates that no link could be established. Are you sure that
everything is working properly: switch, cable ?

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