Usenet 1994 October/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicoctober1994disk1.iso/answers/linux/howto/ethernet/part1

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Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!nic.hookup.net!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!concert!samba.oit.unc.edu!sunSITE!mdw
From: Paul Gortmaker <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce,comp.os.linux.admin,comp.answers,news.answers
Subject: Linux Ethernet HOWTO (Part 1/2)
Followup-To: poster
Date: 15 Dec 1993 22:08:20 GMT
Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lines: 1008
Approved: [e-mail] (Matt Welsh)
Message-ID: <2eo1sk$[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: calypso.oit.unc.edu
Keywords: Linux, Ethernet, TCP/IP, NET-2
Originator: mdw@sunSITE
Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.os.linux.announce:1566 comp.os.linux.admin:2497 comp.answers:3041 news.answers:15863

Archive-Name: linux/howto/ethernet/part1
Last-Modified: November 16, 1993

Linux Ethernet HOWTO v0.3 -- Last updated November 6, 1993
=================================================================
INDEX:

(Part 1/2)
0    Introduction.
0.01        How do I use this Guide?
0.01        Disclaimer
0.02        Questions already?
0.03        Related Documentation
0.04        New Versions of this Document
0.05        Feedback

1    What card should I buy for Linux?
1.01        Eight bit vs 16 bit
1.02        Low price Ethernet cards
1.03        Vendors and brands to avoid.
1.04        Type of cable that your card should support

2    Status of various Ethernet cards under Linux.
2.01        3Com
2.02        Western Digital / SMC
2.03        NExxxx
2.04        Hewlett Packard Cards
2.05        D-Link
2.06        Cabletron
2.07        Allied Telesis
2.08        Arcnet
2.09        Digital / DEC
2.10        Intel
2.11        PureData
2.12        Xircom
2.13        Zenith
2.14        Racal-Interlan
2.15        AMD LANCE (79C960)
2.16        AT-Lan-Tec

3    Clones of popular Ethernet cards.
3.01        WD80x3 Clones
3.02        NE2000 Clones

4    Cables, coax, twisted pairs etc.
4.01        Thin Ethernet (thinnet)
4.02        Twisted Pair
4.03        Thick Ethernet

(Part 2/2)
5    Technical information.
5.01        Probed addresses
5.02        Skeleton / prototype driver
5.03        Driver interface to the kernel
5.04        Interrupts and linux
5.05        Programmed I/O vs. shared mem. vs slave/master DMA
5.06        Programming the Intel chips (i82586 and i82593)
5.07        Programming information from 3Com
5.08        Notes on AMD PCnet-ISA / LANCE Based cards (79C960)
5.09        Multicast and Promiscuous mode
5.10        The Berkely Packet Filter (BPF)
5.11        Unresolved questions / concerns

6    Possible problems, questions and troubleshooting.
6.01        Problems with NE2000 (and clones)
6.02        Problems with WD80*3 cards
6.03        Problems with 3Com cards

7    Networking with a laptop computer.
7.01        Option 1 -- using SLIP
7.02        Option 2 -- Built in NE2000 compatible or PCMCIA Ethercard.
7.03        Option 3 -- ISA Ethercard in the docking station.
7.04        Option 4 -- Pocket / parallel port adaptors.

8    Frequently asked questions.
8.01        Just the FAQ's ma'am -- just the FAQ's.

9    Miscellaneous.
9.01        The Cabletron story.
9.02        The Xircom story
9.03        Closing

======================================================================

0. Introduction.

    This is the Ethernet-HOWTO, which is a compilation of information
    about which ethernet devices can be used for Linux, and how to
    set them up.

    This Ethernet-HOWTO is by:
        Donald J. Becker    <[e-mail]>
        Paul Gortmaker        <[e-mail]>

    It covers what cards you should and shouldn't buy; how to set
    them up, how to run more than one, and other common problems and
    questions. It does *not* cover the software end of things, as that
    is covered in the NET-2 HOWTO. You can freely distribute this
    document as long as you distribute an original copy with the
    author's names intact.

    Other people who have contributed (directly or indirectly) are,
    in alphabetical order:

    Peter Bauer        <[e-mail]>
    Ross Biro        <[e-mail]>
    Alan Cox        <[e-mail]>
    Bjorn Ekwall        <[e-mail]>
    Mike Jagdis        <[e-mail]>
    Duke Kamstra        <[e-mail]>
    Russell Nelson        <[e-mail]>
    Cameron Spitzer        <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
    Dave Roberts        <[e-mail]>
    Glenn Talbott        <[e-mail]>
    Miquel van Smoorenburg    <[e-mail]>

    Many thanks to the above people, and all the other unmentioned
    testers out there.

0.01 How Do I Use This Guide?

    As this guide is getting bigger and bigger, you probably don't want
    to spend the rest of your afternoon reading the whole thing. And you
    don't *have* to read it all. If you haven't got an ethernet card, then
    you will want to start with section one to see what you should buy,
    and what you should avoid. If you have already got an ethernet card,
    but are not sure if you can use it with Linux, then you will want to
    read section two, which contains specific information on each
    manufacturer, and their cards. If you are having trouble with your
    card, then you will want to read the specific information about
    your card in section two and the troubleshooting information in
    section six. If you are intersted in some of the technical aspects
    of the device drivers, then you can find that information in
    section 5.

0.01 Disclaimer

    This document is *not* gospel. However, it is probably the most
    up to date info that you will be able to find. Nobody is responsible
    for what happens to your hardware but yourself. If your ethercard
    or any other hardware goes up in smoke (...nearly impossible!)
    we take no responsibility. ie. THE AUTHORS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE
    FOR ANY DAMAGES INCURRED DUE TO ACTIONS TAKEN BASED ON THE
    INFORMATION INCLUDED IN THIS DOCUMENT.

0.02 Questions already?

        If you have questions about your ethernet card, please READ this
    document first. You may also want to join the NET channel of the
    Linux-activists mailing list by sending mail to
                [e-mail]
        with the line
                X-Mn-Admin: join NET
        at the top of the message body (not the subject). If you want to
    learn how to use the mailing channels, then send an empty message
    to the above address, and you will get an instruction manual sent
    back to you in a few hours. However, it is worth noting that the NET
    channel is primarily used for discussion of the networking code, and
    you may not see much discussion about a particular driver.
        Furthermore keep in mind that the NET channel is for development
    discussions only. General questions on how to configure your system
    should be directed to comp.os.linux.help unless you are actively
    involved in the development of part of the networking for Linux.
    We ask that you *please* respect this general guideline for content.
    You can safely bet that neither of the authors will respond to
    any plea for help that *should* be posted to c.o.l.help, but is
    inappropraitely placed elsewhere.

0.03 Related Documentation

    Much of this info came from saved postings from the comp.os.linux
    groups, which shows that it is a valuable resource of information.
    Other useful information came from a bunch of small files by Donald
    himself. Some of these are found at /pub/linux/info on ftp.super.org
    [192.31.192.1] Of course, if you are setting up an Ethernet card,
    then you will want to read the NET-2 HOWTO so that you can actually
    do something with it. This is also the home of any alpha drivers that
    are not presently in the kernel. And last but not least, the
    contributions from the individuals and companies listed above are
    greatly appreciated as well.

0.04 New versions of this document

        New versions of this document can be retrieved via anonymous
        FTP from sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/* and various
    Linux ftp mirror sites. It will also be posted to the newsgroup
    comp.os.linux.announce at a regular interval. Updates will be made
    as new information / drivers becomes available.

0.05 Feedback

    Any corrections can be sent to one of us ([e-mail]
    or [e-mail]) We will *attempt* to keep this up to date as
    more drivers become available, and as NET-2 matures.

1 What card should I buy for Linux?

    For impatient users that just want a quick, cheap answer the
    summary is: get 16 bit thinnet 8013 cards. For more detail as
    to the who what where and why, read on.

1.01 Eight bit vs 16 bit

    Unless you are a light user, or are confined to using the smaller
    ISA slot, the use of the 8 bit cards like the wd8003 and the 3c503
    is really not worth the cost savings. Get the 8013 or the 3c503/16
    instead.

1.02 Low price Ethernet cards

    I keep track of the current low-price vendors, just because it's
    asked so often.  Call AT-LAN-TEC at 301-948-7070.  Ask for their
    technical support person, "Vincent Bono".  As with all purchases,
    you should indicate you are buying this for a Linux system.
    The last I checked the price for 10 NE2000s was $480, or $48 ea.!
    NB: Their current NE2000 clone is a model that "traps" other
    drivers that probe into their address space. AT-LAN-TEC also carries
    a clone, non-EEPROM 8013 board for somewhat more, and a NE2100 clone.
    Either is a better choice if the very lowest price isn't essential.

    The Allied Telesis AT1500 is offered at a good price by many vendors.
    Even Inmac, known for their premium markup, has this card for under
    $100.

1.03 Vendors and Brands to Avoid

    These vendors have decided *not* to release programming information
    about their products, without signing a non-disclosure agreement.
    More information can be found in sections two and nine.  Hence there
    is no support for products offered from these companies:

        (1) Cabletron
        (2) Xircom

    These particular cards should be avoided, as they are obsolete.
    The reasons as to why they have been classified as such can be
    found in section 2 of this document.

        (1) 3c501
        (2) Arcnet

1.04 Type of cable that your card should support

    Unless you have to conform to an existing network, you will want
    to use thinnet or thin ethernet cable. This is the style with the
    standard BNC connectors. See section 4 for other concerns with
    different types of ethernet cable.

    Most ethercards also come in a "Combo" version for only $10-$20 more.
    These have both twisted pair and thinnet transceiver built-in,
    allowing you to change your mind later.

2 Status of Various Ethernet Cards under Linux

    The only thing that one needs to use an ethernet card with Linux
    is the appropriate driver. For this, it is essential that the
    manufacturer will release the technical programming information to
    the general public without you (or anyone) having to sign your life
    away. A good guide for the likelihood of getting documentation
    (or, if you aren't writing code, the likelihood that someone
    else will write that driver you really, really need) is the
    availability of the Crynwr (nee Clarkson) packet driver. Russ
    Nelson (see the acknowledgements in the intro.) runs this
    operation, and has been very helpful in supporting the development
    of drivers for Linux.

    Given the documentation, you can write a driver for
    your card and use it for Linux, at least in theory. Keep in
    mind that some old hardware that was designed for XT type
    machines will not function very well in a multitasking
    environment such as Linux. Use of these will lead to major
    problems if your network sees a reasonable amount of traffic.

    Most cards come with drivers for MS-DOS interfaces such as
    NDIS and ODI, but these are useless for Linux.  Many people
    have suggested directly linking them in or automatic
    translation, but this is nearly impossible.  The MS-DOS
    drivers expect to be in 16 bit mode and hook into "software
    interrupts", both incompatible with the Linux kernel.  This
    incompatibility is actually a feature, as some Linux drivers
    are considerably better than their MS-DOS counterparts.  The
    "8390" series drivers, for instance, use ping-pong transmit
    buffers, which are only now being introduced in the MS-DOS world.

    Keep in mind that PC ethercards have the widest variety of
    interfaces (shared memory, programmed I/O, bus-master, or slave
    DMA) of any computer hardware for anything, and supporting a
    new ethercard sometimes requires re-thinking most of the lower-level
    networking code. (If you are interested in learning more about
    these different forms of interfaces, see section 5)

    Also, similar product numbers don't always indicate similar products.
    For instance, the 3c50* product line from 3Com varies wildly
    between different members.

    Enough talk. Let's get down to the information you want.

2.01 3Com

    Supported:

        3c503, 3c503/16
            3Com shared-memory ethercards.  They also have a
                programmed I/O mode that doesn't use the 8390
            facilities (their engineers found too many bugs!)
            It should be about the same speed as the same bus
            width WD80x3, but I don't have a 16 bit version
            to benchmark. Unless you are a light user, spend
            the extra money and get the 16 bit model, as the
            price difference isn't significant. The 3c503 does not
            have "EEPROM setup", so the diagnostic/setup program
            isn't needed before running the card with Linux. The
            shared memory address of the 3c503 is set using jumpers
            that are shared with the boot PROM address.  This is
            confusing to people familiar with other ISA cards,
            where you always leave the jumper set to "disable"
            unless you have a boot PROM.

            The Linux 3c503 driver can also work with the 3c503
            programmed-I/O mode, but this is slower and less
            reliable than shared memory mode.  Also, programmed-I/O
            mode is not tested when updating the drivers, the
            deadman (deadcard?) check code may falsely timeout on
            some machines, and the probe for a 3c503 in
            programmed-I/O mode is turned off by default in some
            versions of the kernel.  This was a panic reaction to
            the general device driver probe explosion; the 3c503
            shared memory probe is a safe read from memory, rather
            than an extensive scan through I/O space.  As of pl13,
            the kernel has a I/O port registrar that makes I/O
            space probes safer, (see section 5.1 for more info.)
            and the programmed-I/O 3c503 probe has been re-enabled.
            You still shouldn't use the programmed-I/O mode though,
            unless you need it for MS-DOS compatibility.

            The 3c503's IRQ line is set in software, with no hints
            from an EEPROM.  Unlike the MS-DOS drivers, the
            Linux driver has capability to autoIRQ: it uses the
            first available IRQ line in {5,2/9,3,4}, selected each
            time the card is 'ifconfig'ed.  (Older driver versions
            selected the IRQ at boot time.)  The ioctl() call
            in 'ifconfig' will return EAGAIN if no IRQ line is
            available at that time.

            The 0.99pl13 open-time-autoIRQ 3c503 driver has two
            minor bugs.  The first is that autoIRQ list is effect-
            ively {5, 3, 4} instead of {5, 2/9, 3, 4}.  The second
            is that if you use autoIRQ the interrupt channel isn't
            set the first time, and the board is frozen until the
            first transmit timeout triggers a board reset.  After
            that, everything works fine.  The fixed version will be
            in pl14 if alpha-tester reports are received in time.

        3c509
            A new card from 3Com. It's inexpensive and has
            excellent performance for a non-bus-master design. The
            drawbacks are that it _requires_ very low interrupt
            latency, and it isn't rated for bus speeds greater than
            8Mhz.

            A working 3c509 driver is included as an alpha-test
            version in the 0.99pl13 kernel sources, but
            it's not enabled by default.  You'll have to edit
            config.in by hand to remove the comment character in
            front of the 3c509 line.

            The 3c509 has a tiny Rx buffer, causing the driver to
            occasionally drop a packet if interrupts are masked for
            too long.  To minimize this problem, the driver should
            be completely rewritten to use predictive interrupts.
            (Note: performance re-writes of working drivers are low
            priority unless there is some particular incentive or
            need.)

            It's likely that the EISA 3c579 probe will be working
            and tested before a new driver is done, so watch for
            an interim release.

            There is also an alpha version of a Linux 3c509
            diagnostic and EEPROM setup program, but for now
            users that don't like the defaults should use the
            MS-DOS EEPROM setup program.

        3c579
            The EISA version of the 509. The current EISA version
            uses the same 16 bit wide chip rather than a 32 bit
            interface, so the performance increase isn't stunning.
            The 3c509 driver should work with the EISA version, if
            the EISA version is configured to an ISA base address.
            (I have neither an EISA machine nor a 3c579 to test it
            on. -djb)  We would be interested in hearing progress
            reports from any 3c579 users. (Read the above 3c509
            section for info on the driver.)

            Cameron Spitzer writes:
            "The 3C579 (Etherlink III EISA) should be configured
            as an EISA card.  The IO Base Address (window 0
            register 6 bits 4:0) should be 1f, which selects EISA
            addressing mode.  Logic outside the ASIC decodes the
            IO address s000, where s is the slot number.  I don't
            think it was documented real well.  Except for its IO
            Base Address, the '579 should behave EXACTLY like the
            '509 (EL3 ISA), and if it doesn't, I want to hear
            about it (at my work address).

            I will leave it to the Real Programmers to suggest
            the right hack to /usr/src/linux/net/inet/3c509.c to
            take care of the EISA case.

            Beware that if you put a '509 in EISA addressing mode
            by mistake and save that in the EEPROM, you'll have
            to use an EISA machine or the infamous Test Via to
            get it back to normal, and it will conflict at IO
            location 0 which may hang your ISA machine.  It's not
            my job to say whether this is a bug or feature, but I
            have heard loud and clear that customers don't like
            it and I don't think we'll do it that way again."

    Unsupported:

        3c501
            Too brain-damaged to use. Available surplus from many
            places. Avoid it like the plague. Again, do not
            purchase this card, even as a joke.  It's performance
            is horrible, and it breaks in many ways.

            (I have a standing offer:  I'll pay $2 for each 3c501
            shipped to me postpaid, but only if you include the
            BNC 'T' connector and the jumpers.  $2.50 if you just
            send the 'T', jumpers, and address PROM and promise to
            destroy the board. -djb)

            Cameron L. Spitzer of 3Com said:
            "I'm speaking only for myself here, of course, but I
            believe 3Com advises against installing a 3C501 in a
            new system, mostly for the same reasons Donald has
            discussed.  You probably won't be happy with the
            3C501 in your Linux box.  The data sheet is marked
            "(obsolete)" on 3Com's Developers' Order Form, and
            the board is not part of 3Com's program for sending
            free Technical Reference Manuals to people who need
            them.  The decade-old things are nearly
            indestructible, but that's about all they've got
            going for them any more."

            For those not yet convinced, the 3c501 can only do one
            thing at a time -- while you are removing one packet
            from the single-packet buffer it cannot receive
            another packet, nor can it receive a packet while are
            loading a transmit packet.  This was fine for a
            network between two 8088-based computers where
            processing each packet and replying took 10's of
            msecs, but modern networks send back-to-back
            packets for almost every transaction.

            Having read this far, you must be persistent, so you
            get let in on a secret. As of pl13, some more of
            the hardware problems were "compensated for".

            Ie. in a fit of madness I wasted a whole day updating
            my 3c501 driver and then trying to track down a few
            more of the 3c501 glitches.  It now works well enough
            to NFS mount filesystems, but the receiver still
            occasionally hangs.  I'm mostly certain that this is
            a hardware bug.  When it hangs, the next set of
            outgoing packets will reset the board, but that's
            only useful if you have something occasionally
            generating outgoing packets.

            I'll let this out for "pre-alpha" testing, under the
            following conditions: This is unsupported code.  I
            know my usual copyright says all the code is
            unsupported, but this is _really_ unsupported.  I
            DON'T want to see bug reports, and I'll accept bug
            fixes only if I'm in a good mood that day.

            I don't want to see a fest of "Linux ethercards for
            sale" postings.  A bunch of people have bought dozens
            of "dumpster special" 3c501s, and they hope to sell
            them at rip-off prices.  A 3c501 is barely worth the
            shipping cost, and if I see people trying to sell
            them here by claiming "supported by Linux" I _will_
            flame them.  They are _not_ supported by Linux.

            I don't want to be flamed later for putting out bad
            software.  I don't know all all of the 3c501 bugs,
            and I know this driver only handles a few that I've
            been able to figure out.  It has taken a long
            intense effort just to get the driver working this
            well.

            That said, ftp.super.org:/pub/linux/pl14/3c501.c
            Jumper your card to 0x280, add the 3c501.o to the
            OBJS line in net/inet/Makefile, uncomment the 3c501
            line in linux/config.in, 'make config; make' as usual.

            AutoIRQ works, DMA isn't used, the autoprobe only
            looks at 0x280, the debug level is set with the third
            boot-time argument.  You'll probably want to change
            the default EL_DEBUG to '2'.

            Once again, THE USE OF A 3c501 IS STRONGLY DISCOURAGED
            and it is NOT SUPPORTED BY LINUX.


        3c505
            An Intel-based ethercard with no driver available
            at present. (Not a very common card.)

        3c507
            This card uses one of the Intel chips, and the
            development of the driver is closely related to
            the development of the Intel Ether Express driver.
            An alpha driver is presently available. Expect to
            see the driver in the standard release of pl15.
            Technical information is available in section 5.06,
            and if you have experience in writing drivers, see
            section 5.07 as well.

2.02 Western Digital / SMC

    The ethernet part of Western Digital has been bought by SMC.  The
    SMC Elite and SMC Elite Plus are the same as late-model WD8003
    and WD8013 cards. Note that the SMC Elite Ultra is *not* the
    same as the plain SMC Elite / WD8013 card. (see below)

    Supported:

        WD8003, WD8013, SMC Elite, SMC Elite Plus
            A shared memory design by Western Digital. The
            8 bit 8003 is slightly less expensive, but only
            worth the savings for light use. Over the
            years the design has added more registers and an
            EEPROM.  Clones usually go by the '8013' name, and
            usually use a non-EEPROM (jumpered) design. This part
            of WD has been sold to SMC, so you'll usually see
            something like SMC/WD8013 or SMC Elite Plus (WD8013).
            The shared memory makes the cards 10-20% faster,
            especially with larger packets. More importantly
            (to me at least) it avoids a few bugs in the
            programmed-I/O mode of the 8390, allows safe
            multi-threaded access to the packet buffer, and
            doesn't have a programmed-I/O data register that
            hangs your machine during warm-boot probes.

        SMC Elite 16 ULTRA
            This ethercard is based on a new chip from SMC, with
            a few new features.  While it has a mode that is
            similar to the older SMC ethercards, it's not
            compatible with the old WD80*3 drivers.  However, in
            this mode it shares most of its code with the other
            8390 drivers, while operating somewhat faster than a
            WD8013 clone.

            I'm considering writing a separate driver for the
            Ultra's "Altego" mode which allows chaining transmits
            at the cost of inefficient use of receive buffers,
            but that will probably not happen right away.
            Performance re-writes of working drivers are low
            priority unless there is some particular incentive
            or need.

            This is a new driver, made possible by documentation
            and ethercard loan from [e-mail],
            Duke Kamstra.  If you plan on using an Ultra with Linux
            send him a note of thanks to let him know that there
            are Linux users out there!
            If you would like to _ALPHA_ test this driver:
               ftp.super.org:/pub/linux/pl14/smc-ultra.c
               ftp.super.org:/pub/linux/pl14/Space.c
            You'll have to add an "Ultra" line to config.in and
            edit net/inet/Makefile.  The Ultra driver will probably
            be (silently?) included in pl14.

2.03 NExxxx

    The prefix "NE" came from Novell Ethernet.  Novell followed the
    cheapest NatSemi databook design and sold the manufacturing rights
    (spun off?) Eagle, just to get reasonably-priced ethercards into
    the market.

    Supported:

        NE1000, NE2000
            The now-generic name for a bare-bones design around
            the NatSemi 8390. They use programmed I/O rather than
            shared memory, leading to easier installation but
            slightly lower performance and a few problems. Again,
            the savings of using an 8 bit NE1000 over the NE2000
            are only warranted if you expect light use. Some
            recently introduced NE2000 clones use the National
            Semiconductor "AT/LANTic" 83905 chip, which offers
            a shared memory mode similar to the 8013 and EEPROM
            or software configuration. Some problems can arise
            with poor clones. See the question and answer section
            later in this document, and the section on clones.
            I have written a NE2000 diagnostic program, but it
            is still presently in alpha test. (ne2k)

        NE1500, NE2100
            The AT1500 driver, recently added to the list of
            supported cards, also supports the NE1500, NE2100 and
            clones. The driver shipped with pl12 kernel doesn't
            detect non-AT1500 cards with autoprobe, but will work
            fine if you specify the base address explicitly and
            jumper for DMA channel 5. Read the Allied Telesis
            section for more information on LANCE based cards.

2.04 Hewlett Packard

    The 272** cards use programmed I/O, similar to the NE*000 boards,
    but the data transfer port can be "turned off" when you aren't
    accessing it, avoiding problems with autoprobing drivers.

    Thanks to Glenn Talbott for cleaning up the confusion in this
    section regarding the version numbers of the HP hardware, and
    adding lots of new info.

    Supported:

        27245A
            8 Bit 8390 based 10BaseT, not recommended for all the
            8 bit reasons. It was re-designed a couple years
            ago to be highly integrated which caused some
            changes in initialization timing which only
            affected testing programs, not LAN drivers. (The
            new card is not 'ready' as soon after switching
            into and out of loopback mode.)

        27247B, 27252A
            The 47B is a 16 Bit 8390 based 10BaseT w/AUI, and
            the 52A is a 16 Bit 8390 based ThinLAN w/AUI.
            These cards are high performers (3c509 speed) without
            the interrupt latency problems (32K onboard RAM for TX
            or RX packet buffering). They both offer LAN
            connector autosense, data I/O in I/O space (simpler) or
            memory mapped (faster), and soft configuration. 27247B
            was rated Best for ISA Servers by PC Mag this year.

        27247A
            This is the older model that existed before the "B".
            Two versions 27247-60001 or 27247-60002 have part
            numbers marked on the card. Functionally the same to
            the LAN driver, except bits in ROM to identify
            boards differ. -60002 has a jumper to allow
            operation in non-standard ISA busses (chipsets
            that expect IOCHRDY early.)

        HP J2405A
            These are lower priced, and slightly faster than the
            27247B/27252A, but are missing some features, such
            as AUI, ThinLAN connectivity, and boot PROM socket.
            This is a fairly generic LANCE design, but a minor
            design decision makes it incompatible with a generic
            "NE2100" driver.  Special support for it (including
            reading the DMA channel from the board) should be in
            pl14 thanks to information provided by HP's Glenn
            Talbott, [e-mail].  To use the pl12 and
            pl13 LANCE driver you must remove the outw(...RESET)
            calls that are commented "for old NE2100 designs", as
            these will change the board's base address(!).
            More information on LANCE based cards can be found in
            section 5.08.

2.05 D-Link

    Supported:

        DE-600
            Laptop users and other folk who might want a quick
            way to put their computer onto the ethernet may want
            to use this. The driver is included with the default
            kernel source tree as of pl12 and possibly earlier.
            Bjorn Ekwall <[e-mail]> wrote the original.
            Expect about 80kb/s transfer speed from this via the
            parallel port. You should read the README.DLINK
            file in the kernel source tree. The latest release
            of this driver is v0.32, and it should be included
            in pl14 if all goes well.

        DE100, DE200, DE-220-T
            The manual says that it is 100% compatible with the
            NE2000.  This is not true. You should call them and
            tell them you are using their card with Linux, and they
            should correct their documentation.  Some pre-0.99pl12
            driver versions may have trouble recognizing the DE2**
            series as 16 bit cards, and these cards are the most
            widely reported as having the spurious transfer address
            mismatch errors.

    Unsupported:

        DE-620
            Same as the DE-600, only with two output formats.
            Bjorn writes: "I have still no information on the
            DE-620 that I can include in this release.  (Maybe
            someone well connected to D-Link sees this,
            hint, hint, hint...)

2.06 Cabletron

    Yes, another one of these companies that won't release its
    programming information. They waited for months before actually
    confirming that all their information was proprietary. If you feel
    like asking them why they don't want to release their info so that
    people can use their cards, write to [e-mail]. You should
    read section 9.1 of this document, as it has specific information
    pertaining to Cabletron.

    Supported: (...well, not *really* supported)

        E10**, E10**-x, E20**, E20**-x
            These are NEx000 almost-clones that are reported to
            work with the standard NEx000 drivers, thanks to a
            ctron-specific check during the probe. If there are
            any problems, they are unlikely to be fixed, as the
            programming information is unavailable.

    Unsupported:

        E21**
            Again, there is not much one can do when the
            programming information is proprietary. Feel free
            to ask [e-mail].  This is the only 8390-based
            ethercard series that isn't supported by Linux.

2.07    Allied Telesis

    Allied Telesis is the worlds largest maker of separate
    transceivers thanks to their low prices, and they now have a
    series of low-cost ethercards using the 79C960 version of the AMD
    LANCE.  These are bus-master cards, and thus probably the fastest
    ISA bus ethercards available (although the 3c509 has lower latency
    thanks to predictive interrupts).

    Supported:

        AT1500
            The driver for the AT1500 series is new in the
            0.99pl12 kernel, but it won't work "out-of-the-box"
            with >16M machines.  (NB This isn't a fundamental
            limitation, so stop pointing and laughing at the ISA
            bus. The driver just needs a hook to allocate
            low-memory buffers for the bus-master DMA, and should
            be just as fast on >16M systems. It can be easily
            fixed by initializing the LANCE driver with the
            character devices, but this fix depends on the
            resolution of the networking code uncertainty.)

            For those inquiring about using bus-master LANCE
            boards with >16M systems, I've been working on that
            recently.  I borrowed 16M from another system here
            at work, and am using the resulting 32M system while
            typing this message.  The bad news is that the modified
            driver uses a very ugly interface, and I'm unlikely
            to have it cleaned up and tested in time for pl14.

            This driver should also work with NE1500 and NE2100
            clones.  The pl12 version, included with SLS1.03, is
            named "le0" rather than "eth0" and it requires the
            base address to be specified if you don't have a real
            AT1500.  You might be able to use it as easily as
            using the boot line:
                lilo: linux ether=0,0x320,le0
            (change 0x320 to your true base address) and then
            changing "eth0" to "le0" in /etc/rc.net.  Your DMA
            channel must be set at DMA5, but autoIRQ does work.

            The 0.99pl13 driver should be able to autoprobe for
            your ethercard at the locations {0x300, 0x320, 0x340,
            0x360}.  Also, the driver is now named "eth0" by
            default.

            Future driver versions may figure out a way to
            autoDMA.  Although there is no autoDMA (until I verify
            that autoDMA is safe and reliable), some versions
            (pl13) allow passing the DMA channel at boot-time via
            LILO.  (Boot-time parameters can be made permanent in
            LILO v13+, read the docs.)  The DMA channel otherwise
            defaults to DMA5.

            Please report the exact chip used by your ethercard,
            and any success or failure you have.  This driver is
            still young, and I've gotten few reports.

            More information on AMD LANCE based Ethernet cards
            can be found in section 5.08.

        AT1700
            The Allied Telesis AT1700 series ethercards are based
            on the Fujitsu MB86965.  This chip uses a programmed
            I/O interface, and a pair of fixed-size tranmit
            buffers.  This allows small groups of packets to sent
            be sent back-to-back, with a short pause while
            switching buffers.

            A unique feature is the ability to drive 150ohm STP
            (Shielded Twisted Pair) cable commonly installed for
            Token Ring, in addition to 10baseT 100ohm UTP
            (unshielded twisted pair).

            A mis-feature to watch out for is that the current
            production version silently wires to DMA channel 5,
            rendering it useless.  No device driver will be
            written using DMA if installing a second card into
            the machine breaks both, and only way to disble the
            DMA is with a knife.

            The at1700 driver is in alpha test, and will probably
            be released with the pl14 kernel.

2.08 Arcnet

    There is no Arcnet driver for Linux. Feel free to write a driver. With
    the very low cost and better performance of ethernet, I expect that
    most places will be giving away their Arcnet hardware for free,
    resulting in a lot of home systems with Arcnet.

    An advantage of Arcnet is that all of the cards have identical
    interfaces, so once a driver is available it will work for everyone.

2.09 Digital / DEC

    Supported: DE200-64k, DE200-32k, DE202, DE100, DEPCA rev E

        Peter Bauer has written a driver for the older DEPCA models.
        Look for depca-0.7.tar.z  -- It patches against pl13. This
        will allow you to use any of the above cards. FvK is
        currently trying to arrange integration of this driver
        into pl14, so you *may* not need this file after pl13.
        If you are using this driver, Peter would like to hear
        from you. His e-mail addr. is near the start of this
        document.

        Peter had this to say about all the DEPCA cards:
        "In this thing I'll document my knowledge about the digital
        ethernet boards for PC's: There exist lots of different
        hardware-releases of ethernet boards of DEC, all subsumed
        under the keyword 'DEPCA'. All these boards are more or
        less compatible as they all seem to use some chip called
        "Lance". The hardware of these cards and the programing
        of them is documented in a manual purchasable from DEC
        (about $70 -- I had the order number some months ago, but
        lost it...)"

    Unsupported: Digital Etherlink III

        Again, Peter Bauer said that "the new etherlink III seems to
        be a break: No official docu from DEC as far as today,
        other (incompatible??) hardware used, and (no joke) (at least
        for the first delivered cards) also a sharp knife necessary
        to get the card working (needs cut of some irq lines ...)
        As far as I know, lots of DEC Employees use Linux (at least
        for hobby purposes) and the depca-driver, because its a
        de-facto standard in DEC, so I encourage any DEC-employee
        reading this to check wether my writing is true, and to
        support sources of information about the etherworks-III."

2.10 Intel Ethernet Cards

    Supported: Ether Express

        This card uses the intel i82586. An alpha driver is available.
        Expect to see the driver in the standard release of pl15.

2.11 PureData

    Supported: PDUC8028, PDI8023

        The PureData PDUC8028 and PDI8023 series of cards are reported
        to work, thanks to special probe code contributed by Mike
        Jagdis <[e-mail]>.  The support is integrated
        with the WD driver.

2.12 Xircom

    Another group that won't release documentation. No cards
    supported.  Don't look for any support in the future unless
    they release their programming information. And this is
    highly unlikely, as they *forbid* you from even reverse-
    engineering their drivers. Here is some of the results from
    people who have tried to deal with Xircom.

    "I had no end of problems trying to work with Xircom.
    After spending months talking to them and working up a
    prospectus, I was told that no information would be forthcoming
    and that they were not interested in markets other than the
    ISA/DOS market. (I was trying to interface the pocket adapters
    to an Amiga). I won't work with them anymore and I won't
    recommend their products to anyone."

    "They (Xircom) won't give it (programming info.) out. BSDI
    was able to get the spec and write a driver for it, but
    only by promising not to give out the source."

    You might also be interested in reading section 9.2

2.13 Zenith

    The built-in Z-Note network adaptor is based on the Intel
    i82593 using two DMA channels.  There might be a driver for it
    in early 1994. See section 5.06 for more information.

2.14 Racal-Interlan

    There is an alpha driver for the NI5210 floating about.
    (last seen on tsx-11.mit.edu /pub/linux/ALPHA/ni/ni52.tar.gz)
    This card also uses one of the Intel chips. See section
    5.06 for more information.

2.15 AMD LANCE (79C960)

    There really is no AMD ethernet card. You are probably reading this
    because the only markings you could find on your card said AMD
    and the above number. The above number refers to a chip from AMD
    that is the heart of many ethernet cards. See the section on the
    Allied Telesis AT1500, the NE1500/2100 and the information in
    section 5.08. Chances are that the existing LANCE driver will work
    with all AMD LANCE based cards.

2.16 AT-Lan-Tec

    AT-Lan-Tec pocket ethernet adaptor:
        This is a generic, low-cost OEM pocket adaptor being sold by
        AT-Lan-Tec, and (likely) a number of other suppliers.  A
        driver is in progress, but not yet complete (-djb 11/9/93).

3. Clones of popular Ethernet cards.

    Due to the popular design of some cards,  different companies will
    make "clones" or replicas of the original card. However, one must
    be careful, as some of these clones are not 100% compatible, and
    can be troublesome. Some common problems with "not-quite-clones"
    are noted in the question and answer section of this document.

3.1 WD80x3 clones

    The following clones are reported to work with the standard
    WD80x3 driver:

    AT-LAN-TEC 8013
    PureData (not a 8013 clone, but the 8013 driver has special code)
    LANNET LEC-45
    PE-8013 (WD-8013 Compatible)

3.2 NE2000 clones

    The following clones are reported to work with the standard
    NE2000 driver:

    Accton NE2000 (might not get detected at boot, see section 6)
    Alta Combo NE2000 clone
    Aritsoft LANtastic AE-2 (OK, but has flawed error-reporting registers)
    Asante Etherpak 2001/2003
    AT-LAN-TEC NE2000 clone (uses Winbond chip that traps SCSI drivers)
    Cabletron products: E10**,  E10**-x,  E20**, E20**-x
    Cnet UTP 10baseT (NE 2000 emulation)
    D-Link Ethernet II (bad clones, but the driver checks for them)
    4-Dimension FD0490 EtherBoard16
    LTC E-NET/16 P/N: 8300-200-002 ([e-mail])
    Network Solutions HE-203
    SIIG Inc E-Lan/200 (NE 2000 comp.)
    SVEC 4 Dimension Ethernet

4. Cables, coax, twisted pairs etc.

    If you are starting a network from scratch, it's considerably less
    expensive to use thin ethernet, RG58 co-ax cable with BNC connectors,
    than old-fashioned thick ethernet, RG-5 cable with N connectors, or
    10baseT, twisted pair telco-style cables with RJ-45 "phone"
    connectors.

4.01 Thin Ethernet (thinnet)

    Thin ethernet is the "ether of choice".  The cable is inexpensive.  If
    you are making your own cables solid-core RG58A is $0.09/ft. and
    stranded RG58AU is $0.15/ft.  Twist-on BNC connectors are < $2 ea.,
    and other misc. pieces are similarly inexpensive.  It is essential
    that you properly terminate each end of the cable with 50 ohm
    terminators, so budget $2 ea. for a pair.  It's also vital that
    your cable have no "stubs" -- the 'T' connectors must be attached
    directly to the ethercards.

4.02 Twisted pair

    Twisted pair networks require active hubs, which start around $250,
    and the raw cable cost can actually be higher than thinnet.  They are
    usually sold using the claim that you can use your existing telephone
    wiring, but it's a rare installation where that turns out to be the
    case.  The claim that you can upgrade to higher speeds is also
    suspect, as most proposed schemes use higher-grade (read $$) cable and
    more sophisticated termination ($$$) than you would likely install on
    speculation.

    On the other hand, hubs are rapidly dropping in price, all 100Mb/sec
    ethernet proposals use twisted pair, and most new business
    installations use twisted pair.

4.03 Thick Ethernet

    Thick ethernet is mostly obsolete, and is usually used only to remain
    compatible with an existing implementation.  You can stretch the rules
    and connect short spans of thick and thin ethernet together with a
    passive $3 N-to-BNC connector, and that's often the best solution to
    expanding an existing thicknet.  A correct (but expensive) solution is
    to use a repeater in this case.

[End part 1/2]