[vortex] Strange errors from 3c509B driver

[Richard Gooch]

Bogdan Costescu writes:
> On Fri, 8 Dec 2000, Richard Gooch wrote:
> 
> >  Basic mode control register 0x3000: 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 complete.
> >  Your link partner is generating 100baseTx link beat  (no autonegotiation).
> >
> > The IT people told me they set the switch port to 100 Mb/s FD. Of
> > course, I have no way of checking, because the switch is in the
> > service corridor and I'm not part of the central campus ruling class
> > so I don't have a key. This is where the breakers are kept too, so you
> > can see why I would feel really empowered :-(
> >
> > Anyway, even if they fouled up and set the switch to 100 Mb/s HD, I
> > would have thought that autonegotiation would have taken care of
> > this. I've even power-cycled the box, to no avail.
> 
> Autonegotiation should work if the switch is forced to 100/HD, but
> it might fail if the switch is forced to 100/FD, which is what the
> IT people told you...

OK, why is this? I don't understand why if one end is fixed and the
other is auto, why the auto end can't sense the carrier and work it
out from there?

> In this case, I guess that you only have 2 solutions:
> - tell IT people to enable autonegotiation on that port
> - force the NIC to FD mode, by using 'full_duplex=1" module option; you
> might also need to force 100Mbit.

Is there a way of doing this via ifconfig (my man page doesn't
document a 100 Mb FD option for media type)? I've got 3 NICs in this
box, and I don't want to end up turning off autonegotiation for the
other two, otherwise I'll just end up moving the problem down the
line.

				Regards,

					Richard....
Permanent: rgooch@atnf.csiro.au
Current:   rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca