From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Apr 28 1:40:38 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from hotmail.com (f59.law4.hotmail.com [216.33.149.59]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2EA7D37B422 for ; Sat, 28 Apr 2001 01:40:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from messiah_man@hotmail.com) Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Sat, 28 Apr 2001 01:40:36 -0700 Received: from 130.225.197.62 by lw4fd.law4.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Sat, 28 Apr 2001 08:40:35 GMT X-Originating-IP: [130.225.197.62] From: "Munish Chopra" To: grog@lemis.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Realtek 8139 NIC and IRQ problem. Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 10:40:35 +0200 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Apr 2001 08:40:36.0128 (UTC) FILETIME=[E5216200:01C0CFBE] Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Bill did actually get documentation from RealTek (though he said it was pretty horrible). As for what issues the RealTek 8139 might have, who knows? I haven't really put mine through much rough testing on a LAN, but I have the chance today... Cheers, Munish >From: Greg Lehey >To: Munish Chopra >CC: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org >Subject: Re: Realtek 8139 NIC and IRQ problem. >Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 11:36:39 +0930 > >On Friday, 27 April 2001 at 8:55:52 +0200, Munish Chopra wrote: > >> I wonder how good our RealTek driver is. > > > > It's written by Bill Paul, who is (as far is I know and have heard) >actually > > more than 'just decent' at writing drivers. The driver seems to work >fine > > too, but the card just screws things up every chance it gets. > >Bill's a good programmer, no doubt. But he can't outguess the >manufacturers if he doesn't get the documentation he needs. For >example, I had a case recently with an el cheapo card which had >slightly different specs from others of its ilk: > >dc0: port 0xc400-0xc4ff mem >0xeb000000-0xeb0000ff irq 3 at device 9.0 on pci0 >dc0: Ethernet address: 00:80:c6:f9:d3:fa > >The symptoms were that the card would appear to go to sleep, and you >couldn't contact the machine. If you were on the machine, however, >things would work a while and then freeze up again. It turned out >that this card had a subtle difference in the multicast hash table: it >was only 128 bits instead of 512. This stopped it receiving broadcast >messages, such as ARP requests. Bill added a fix for it, and we have >seen no problems since. It's quite possible that the RealTek driver >has similar issues. > >Greg _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message