From: Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] IEEE 1394 support?
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 22:53:48 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <200108040253.WAA18507@augusta.math.psu.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20010804020251.2BDA0199D7@mail.cse.psu.edu>
In article <20010804020251.2BDA0199D7@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>As I've mentioned before, I started doing a driver for the Realtek chip
>and gave up when I tried to supplement the meagre datasheet by looking at
>the Linux and one of the *BSD drivers. Both drivers seemed to have fixes
>for seemingly awful chip problems, but not the same ones.
Exactly my point....
>If there was an 8255x on the Shuttle motherboard it might be the only Intel
>chip on it.
Hmm, perhaps a 3COM 3c905x, or a DEC 21040 (who makes the Tulip now,
anyway?), or even an NS83815, which is even mostly compatible with the
SiS900. Surely there's an alternative? I suppose one could use the
only PCI slot for a better ethernet card, but I'd rather use it for
something more interesting.
Some of the comments from the BSD driver are kind of funny:
/*
* The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
* probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
* exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus-master
* DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance
* gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.
*
* For transmission, the chip offers a series of four TX descriptor
* registers. Each transmit frame must be in a contiguous buffer, aligned
* on a longword (32-bit) boundary. This means we almost always have to
* do mbuf copies in order to transmit a frame, except in the unlikely
* case where a) the packet fits into a single mbuf, and b) the packet
* is 32-bit aligned within the mbuf's data area. The presence of only
* four descriptor registers means that we can never have more than four
* packets queued for transmission at any one time.
*
* Reception is not much better. The driver has to allocate a single large
* buffer area (up to 64K in size) into which the chip will DMA received
* frames. Because we don't know where within this region received packets
* will begin or end, we have no choice but to copy data from the buffer
* area into mbufs in order to pass the packets up to the higher protocol
* levels.
*
* It's impossible given this rotten design to really achieve decent
* performance at 100Mbps, unless you happen to have a 400Mhz PII or
* some equally overmuscled CPU to drive it.
*
* On the bright side, the 8139 does have a built-in PHY, although
* rather than using an MDIO serial interface like most other NICs, the
* PHY registers are directly accessible through the 8139's register
* space. The 8139 supports autonegotiation, as well as a 64-bit multicast
* filter.
*
* The 8129 chip is an older version of the 8139 that uses an external PHY
* chip. The 8129 has a serial MDIO interface for accessing the MII where
* the 8139 lets you directly access the on-board PHY registers. We need
* to select which interface to use depending on the chip type.
*/
Granted most CPU's are now faster than a 400MHz Pentium (wow; just
consider that for a moment), but still....
- Dan C.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2001-08-04 2:53 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2001-08-04 2:02 jmk
2001-08-04 2:53 ` Dan Cross [this message]
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2001-08-03 19:24 jmk
2001-08-04 1:45 ` Dan Cross
2001-08-03 17:49 anothy
2001-08-03 17:30 jmk
2001-08-03 19:15 ` Dan Cross
2001-08-03 16:27 anothy
2001-08-03 17:13 ` Dan Cross
2001-08-03 16:15 jmk
2001-08-03 9:05 Jeff Sickel
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=200108040253.WAA18507@augusta.math.psu.edu \
--to=cross@math.psu.edu \
--cc=9fans@cse.psu.edu \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).