Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2001 17:39:00 -0500 From: Paul Halliday <dp@penix.org> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: if_fxp - the real point Message-ID: <3AA95B84.E7664C6@penix.org> References: <20010309221250.2384337B71B@hub.freebsd.org>
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Hi.
Of the 8 machines that I own, all of the NIC's work just fine. Thank
you for doing such a great job! To the rest of you: read the
hardware.txt. Use a supported card or go suck a rotten egg.
Bill Paul wrote:
>
> Grrrrr.
>
> (Yes, that's a bad omen. Get the women and children to safety now.)
>
> (On second thought, leave the women.)
>
> I think there's one important point that a lot of you are missing here,
> which is GETTING DOCUMENTATION. I've seen a couple people suggest that
> they'd be willing to donate time/code/etc to fix the fxp driver, but I
> strongly suspect that most of these people don't have the slighest idea
> what's really involved. You can't just look at the driver code, poke at
> it for a while, and expect the answer to fall out: you need the damn
> manual for it. And you can't get that from Intel because they're NDA
> nazis. (Johnathan Lemon is the one exception to this since he apparently
> has ways to gain access to Intel documentation thanks to his job. I think
> he's still subject to NDAs though, so I question just how much help he
> can really provide. Not that I don't encourge him to do an end run around
> Intel wherever he can, of course.)
>
> I see lots of finger-pointing here, yet nobody seems to be prepared to
> fault the real culprit, namely Intel. Nobody sends nasty e-mails to
> their Intel sales reps or other high mucky-mucks taking them to task over
> their nonsensical NDA requirements. Nobody makes any effort to explain to
> them just how much more sense it would make and how much more money they
> would earn by simply preparing some decent manuals for a change and not
> being so anal-retentive about releasing them. If everyone would concentate
> their energy on this for a change instead of sniping at each other, I would
> be a happy man.
>
> (Alright, I'm exagerating. It would take significantly more than that to
> make me happy, but that's a rant for another day.)
>
> Right now I'd like to be able to write some more NIC drivers, but I have
> the following problems:
>
> Tigon 3:
> -------
> 3Com now owns Alteon's gigabit NIC business, and Alteon's open driver
> development program seems to have been killed off. To make matters worse,
> the Tigon 3 seems to actually be a Broadcom product called the BCM 5700.
> Broadcom an even bigger NDA nazi than Intel, if you can believe that, and
> 3Com usually has no idea what's going on with regards to hardware that it
> it didn't built itself. It also has a tendency to drag its feet when it
> comes to putting together decent manuals for release to non-NDA partners.
>
> 3Com 3CR990
> -----------
> This is 3Com's ARM-based 10/100 NIC that can do hardware encryption.
> I have no idea how to get programming info for this NIC out of 3Com without
> NDA.
>
> Level1 LXT1000
> --------------
> This is a gigabit MAC which D-Link is shipping on their gigabit ethernet
> cards. Intel owns Level1 now, and documentation for the LXT1000 controller
> is nowhere to be found.
>
> Broadcom 10mbps homePNA
> -----------------------
> I tried navigating Broadcom's sales/support maze looking for info on
> this chip, they told me they weren't interested in releasing any info
> without NDA at this time. From what I've been told, this chip has some
> other functionality built into it which allows it to be used for more
> than just homePNA networking, and Broadcom simply doesn't want to tell
> people about it. I don't care one way or the other.
>
> USB 802.11 wireless NICs
> -----------------
> Somebody pointed one of these out to me recently, I think they're a
> D-Link product. Again, I don't know who makes them or where to find
> manuals. No documentation, no cookie.
>
> There's probably other cases here that I've forgotten. Regardless, it
> really cheeses me off when people ask me "hey, I just saw such-and-such
> card that looks really neat; if I get you one, can you write a driver
> for it? I'd be happy to test it for you." Having a sample card doesn't
> do a damn thing for me THE STINKING PROGRAMMING MANUAL. If I *had* the
> manuals for these things, I'd be probably already be working on drivers!
>
> "But Bill, you work for BSDi now. Can't they get you manuals?" Working for
> BSDi is irrelevant: I can't sign any NDAs if I want to release driver
> source, and I do want to release the source. And there isn't a designated
> person at BSDi that I can turn to to help turn up the heat on recalcitrant
> vendors. I'm not willing to go sneaking around and mooching these things
> from secret sources since it just perpetuates the officially sanctioned
> vendor stupidity. I don't want to have meetings, negotiations or "strategic
> partnerships," I just want the stupid programming manuals without NDAs.
>
> A few other things while I'm here. D-Link, LinkSys and Netgear do *NOT*
> make their own 10/100 NIC controller chips. They buy them from other
> companies. In some cases, they buy the whole card and simply stamp their
> name on it. There were at least 4 companies at one point all selling the
> exact same PNIC 82c169 card under different names. LinkSys is currently
> using the ADMtek Centaur PCI and Cardbus chips in their 10/100 NICs.
> Netgear is using the NatSemi DP83815 chipset on their FA311 and FA312
> cards. D-Link uses RealTek 8139 and VIA Rhine II chips depending on just
> which model NIC you happen to get. The D-Link DFE-570TX quad port card
> uses the Intel 21143, and it's dirt cheap compared to the ZNYX and
> Adaptec cards of similar design, assuming you can find them. The
> interesting thign is that *all* of these chips have manuals available
> from their respective vendors WITHOUT NDAs, so I don't want to hear
> people telling me that NDAs are "just the price of doing business." I
> have stacks of unencumbered manuals here, and I'd be more than happy to
> smack people upside the head with them to prove them wrong.
>
> I'm getting really tired of being the only one beating this drum. I keep
> telling people to complain to whoever will listen inside these companies
> in the hopes that *somebody* will get the point. I also keep hoping that
> other people will appear and demonstrate some driver fu so that I don't
> have to be the only one people will turn to when they have a NIC that they
> want supported. I'm only one person, not a code generating machine, and
> I don't spend 24 hours a day agonizing over how I'm going to support
> every single network card on the planet. I tried it and it sucked, and
> not getting any support from the really big vendors or from inside BSDi
> doesn't make it any more appealing.
>
> All I can say is, Johnathan, I'm glad it's you and not me. And Dennis,
> you deserve a working driver. I really hope you get it. Part of me even
> wishes I could fix the problems for you, but my hands are tied and my
> patience has word thin.
>
> -Bill
>
> =============================================================================
> -Bill Paul (925) 691-2800 | Systems Programmer, Master of Unix-Fu
> wpaul@osd.bsdi.com | BSDi Open Source Solutions
> =============================================================================
> "I like zees guys. Zey are fonny guys. Just keel one of zem." -- The 3 Amigos
> =============================================================================
>
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Paul H.
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