From owner-freebsd-current Fri Jan 21 11:40: 5 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from geocities.com (mail8.geocities.com [209.1.224.42]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6078D15009 for ; Fri, 21 Jan 2000 11:40:01 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from arnee@geocities.com) Received: from geocities.com (mg136-175.ricochet.net [204.179.136.175]) by geocities.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA01691; Fri, 21 Jan 2000 11:39:05 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <3888B6CC.B7842087@geocities.com> Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 11:43:09 -0800 From: arnee X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Bill Paul Cc: dillon@apollo.backplane.com, current@FreeBSD.ORG, gerald@manhattanprojects.com Subject: Re: ...(file transfer crashes system) ethernet driver or IP stack bug? References: <200001210552.AAA11760@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Bill Paul wrote: > Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, arnee had to walk > into mine and say: hehehhe... Oh no!! What did I walk into... a quicksand! :-) > Ack... > No, please... > Stop, you're killing me... > Aieeeee! > > Oh for the love of *god*. Rip this thing out of your machine now. Put it > on the ground. Stomp on it. Repeatedly. Then set it on fire. Bury the > remains in the back yard. Then run - don't walk! - to your local computer > store, put a crowbar in your wallet, and buy a better ethernet card. hahhaha!! :-) I knew I would get this... I got this machine for free and used to run BeOS on it. It is *not* a priority to have FreeBSD or any other OS running on this machine. Yes, I've thought of not even taking the damn thing... but since I have another closet to place it in, what the heck... I'll play with it. > Don't whine, don't bitch, don't moan, don't complain that it works with > Windows (actually, I bet it doesn't; not on that hardware, using bus > master DMA for both controllers). Just do it. Hmm... and yes not the best compare to my 3Coms, but I never thought that the ethernet card would be that bad. And I would never base my decisions ("..whine, ..bitch, ..moan, ..complain") of using it because the hardware works with win9x. I have 2 linux boxes, a freebsd 3.2 box, and 2 other win9x boxes using FA310TX and they work just fine. A couple of them connected to a 10Mbps 3com hub (with 2 other boxes with 3Com NICs) and the others, plus this machine, connected to a 100Mbps Netgear hub (with other boxes with 3Com NICs). > You have a Cyrix CPU, and I'm willing to bet you've overclocked it. ("What? > You mean that might have some effect on the situation?") You have a PCI > chipset which the probe messages don't even identify, and you're using > not one but *two* bus master devices on it, one of which is a PNIC ethernet > controller that can barely do bus master DMA correctly on a good day. Not > only that, but you have two ATA controllers in this machine, one of which has > no devices on it, and you have the damn hard disk on the *second* controller. > Why do you have two controllers? Why not just use the built-in one! Yes, one would wonder why. But, it is some what of a catch 22 installing 4.0-current. I am using a 17gig (Ultra-ATA/66 capable) harddrive with a MB bios that can only handle 8.4gig (Ultra-ATA/33) harddrive. And since I have a Promise Ultra-ATA/66 controller that 4.0-current supports.. why not! Yes, I know there are other, in fact many other ways to make it work... one is by compiling a 3.4 kernel with a patch--or does 3.4-stable now supports the card (ATA/66)? However, there is no point, and it's not feasible, of reverting the harddrive to an ATA/33, which the MB bios will not see anyway, to make it work. > Does this have something to do with the PNIC? Oh, probably. But I'm not going > to even attempt to debug this. There's no way in hell I could duplicate this > hardware configuration locally, and even if I did, I probably couldn't > duplicate the exact same problem. And even if I could do *that*, I > still wouldn't know how to fix it. I'm sorry, but I've pulled out enough > hair over this damn chip. I'm sure I've wasted at least a couple months > of my life trying to make this thing work reliably. I've added several > software workarounds, I defaulted the stupid transmit threshold setting > to store and forward mode. Well I've had it: no more. I'm through trying > to bitchslap this rotten piece of silicon to its senses. I'm not going to > go nuts every time somebody comes up with yet another oddball hardware > combination. There's a limit to my patience and this chip has reached it. > Now it's somebody else's turn to lose their sanity. I have the datasheet for > the PNIC at http://www.freebsd.org/~wpaul/PNIC. You have the driver source. > Somebody *else* try and figure it out, and then tell me then answer when > you have it. Well, I would say that my FreeBSD 3.2 box (with not so "oddball hardware combination" :-)) is doing just fine with this NIC... and I bow my hat to you, thank you. > That said, if you have overclocked this machine, then un-overclock it *right* > *now* and never, ever do it again! PCI bus master DMA is goofy enough without > people sticking their fingers in the works. Although I don't remember overclocking it... I'll take a look. > Man, why does PC hardware have to suck so hard. > > -Bill Thanks for the insight and help. arnee "Ackkkkk.. a spider!! That damn "bug" always *gets* my attention! :-) Sorry, just a little humor! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message