From owner-freebsd-stable  Wed May  1 21:42: 3 2002
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Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 21:37:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: Glendon Gross <gross@xinetd.ath.cx>
To: Sten <sten@blinkenlights.nl>
Cc: Guido Kollerie <gkoller@chello.nl>,
	Danny Braniss <danny@cs.huji.ac.il>, current@FreeBSD.ORG,
	freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: 3Com 3c905C-TX
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Out of curiosity, do only 3c509's exibit this behavior, or is this
the core problem with 3c59x's as well?  My experiences have not
been consistent with these cards, and I had assumed it was due
to buggy code in the 3-Com chipset.  I've noticed flaky behavior from the
"Vortex" [3c59x] card as well.  

Just now I have been wrestling with an ISA 3c509 which has
a Lucent 40-01304 chip on it.  At first the card was detected, and
later not detected [on a different OS.]    I vote for the fxp's as
well, I've had hardly any problems with them.

Is there a way to lock down the card by hacking the driver, so it won't 
try to auto-negotiate the connection?

On Wed, 1 May 2002, Sten wrote:

> On Wed, 1 May 2002, Guido Kollerie wrote:
> 
> 
> <snip>
> >
> > Unfortunately the switch is unmanaged hence I am not able to
> > explicitely set the switch to 100 Mbits full-duplex. Using
> > ifconfig to set the nic to 10baseT/UTP and then back to 100baseTX
> > full-duplex doesn't help. Only a reboot will bring the NIC back
> > to 100 Mbits full duplex mode.
> 
> Please note that due to vagaries in the auto-negotiation
> spec 3com and cisco dont work well together.
> And 3coms ( on linux atleast ) have the added
> bonus of sometimes deciding to change
> speed/duplex just for the heck of it.
> 
> The only way to use them reliably is to force
> both the card and the switch. We came to the
> conclusion that fxp's are a nicer option.
> 
> IMHO just creating a reliable and clearly defined
> auto-negotiation protocol will do more for ethernet
> speed than gigabit ethernet :).
> 
> 
> -- 
> Sten Spans
> 
>   "What does one do with ones money,
>    when there is no more empty rackspace ?"
> 
> 
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