*BSD News Article 77924


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!metro!metro!asstdc.scgt.oz.au!nsw.news.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!news.sprintlink.net!news-stk-11.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-stk-3.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!new-news.sprintlink.net!howland.erols.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!EU.net!usenet2.news.uk.psi.net!uknet!usenet1.news.uk.psi.net!uknet!dispat
ch.news.demon.net!demon!awfulhak.demon.co.uk!awfulhak.demon.co.uk!awfulhak.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail
From: brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk (Brian Somers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: 3c590 requires low NFS r/wsize ?
Date: 9 Sep 1996 10:30:12 +0100
Organization: Coverform Ltd.
Lines: 45
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <510o34$9h@anorak.coverform.lan>
References: <50haec$fb@anorak.coverform.lan> <upohjldd5s.fsf@sirius.sbl.cl.nec.co.jp>
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.coverform.lan
X-NNTP-Posting-Host: awfulhak.demon.co.uk
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]

Naoki Hamada (nao@sbl.cl.nec.co.jp) wrote:
: Brian Somers wrote:
: >I've heard conflicting reports about this card.  Last time I suggested
: >that people don't buy 3com for FreeBSD, I got some mail saying "why?
: >I've never had any problems".  My only experience is with a 3c589c....

: Hey Brian, your 3C589C PCCARD is different from a 3C590 PCI adapter
: card. You say just 'this card', but things are not so simple in the
: world.

Yeah, I know, but I suspect the I/O designs are pretty similar....
But hey, I don't know a great deal about the internals - the 3c589C
doesn't work properly, even the vendor supplied PCMCIA drivers don't
see the card (but I suppose that's because they don't understand
my PCMCIA controller).... only Windows95 has got it right so far :(

The 3c509, I've heard, suffers from the problems below - *but*, I've
heard other reports that there are no such problems..... either way,
I wouldn't buy 3com 'cos it's "risky".

: >It seems that when your out buffer fills up, the kernel stops writing
: >to it - waiting for the card to do a "I've transmitted" interrupt.
: >However, between the "try to send (and fail)" bit and the "re-enable
: >interrupts and wait for one" bit, the transmit finishes and sends the
: >interrupt....  one that's missed by the driver....  That's my
: >understanding of the problem anyway :(

: Which driver are you talking about? What version of FreeBSD do you
: use? Have you applied any patch to the kernel? Your description is
: useless unless you tell us details about your environment.

I'm actually using a rather old pccard-test-960414 on 2.2-960323-SNAP.
I've patched it so that it requests a response to all outgoing packets
(by setting the top bit of the length field).... no joy :(

I'm moving soon, when I do, I'm gonna get a SNAP subscription from
Walnut Creek & upgrade the laptop.  Until then.... it works, kinda -
I just have to set up a "while :; do ifconfig nep0 inet myaddr; sleep 20;
done" when I boot ..... thank god NFS is UDP.

Thanks for your concern, but I know the answer (upgrade) - just bitchin' :)

--
Brian <brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk>
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....