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Date:      Mon, 28 Feb 2000 12:52:22 +0100
From:      Ben Gras <ben@euro.net>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Question: Problem with PCI network cards (e.g. ed0 and vx0) - no interrupts?
Message-ID:  <20000228125222.A41924@euronet.nl>

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Greetings -hackers,

Here's a question I sent to -questions a long time ago. The matter is
quite kludged over (by buying an ISA card), but I'm kinda curious
regardless. Is this a known thing?

	=Ben


----- Forwarded message from Ben Gras <ben@scum.org> -----

Subject: Problem with PCI network cards (e.g. ed0 and vx0) - no interrupts?
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 20:43:53 +0200 (CEST)
From: Ben Gras <ben@scum.org>

Greetings -questions denizens,

Any information available on the following problem would be welcome;
the symptom is that various PCI network cards will be recognized
but Don't Work.

vx0 and ed0 will be seen (in booting) but produce "ed%d: device
timeout" style errors; reading the code leads me to believe the
drivers are expecting interrupts but aren't generated by the card.
Searching the archives reveals this is usually caused (with the
NE2000 clones at least) by irq conflicts, or the BNC cable not
being attached; however, I've removed all other cards (except for
the videocard) from the system and tried all possible IRQs (using
the BIOS setup), which the system indeed finds on probing it (it
uses and configures the irq set in the BIOS, whether it's 5, 9,
10, 11 or ..  and makes no difference). The machine is an AMD 486
(80 or 100 MHz), the BIOS is an Award modular BIOS V4.50G, V4.26GN2
(12/07/94; don't ask me about the meanings of those two version
numbers). The board calls itself a "486-VIP-IO" mainboard, and it's
"Based on the VIA GMC chipset" (this is my bluffing mode) according
to the manual. (ISA/VL+PCI). It mentions a VIA VT82C505 as a bus
bridge, if that's useful. It claims PCI2.0 compliance.  I have more
details of this thing if useful.

Other things I've tried include other (pci) slots, settings in BIOS
(other than changing the irq). The system doesn't say anything
about spurious interrupts, so I presume the card isn't generating
the wrong ones, but none at all. vmstat -i reports nothing out of
the ordinary, except for no interrupts from any network cards of
course. Also if I set up nothing in the BIOS, the IRQ will show up
as 0 or 255 -- hmm. The manual mentions, a jumper I can twiddle
for IRQ 11 if a PCI card is inserted; under "IRQ pull up/pull down",
where up is default, and down says, `pull down if pci card is
inserted'. I twiddled it without knowing what I was doing; it had
no effect though. I presumed this would be a bizarreness of the
el-cheapo NE2000 clone I first used, but even the rather sophisticated
3C905B had no luck; same symptom: probe OK, then no interfacing.
The videocard, incidentally, is a PCI card too and is OK, although
as a clever friend mentioned, it probably doesn't need interrupts
to do something useful.

Other BIOS PCI features settings I twiddled are "Int <A/B/C/D>
using IRQ: " which are set to N/A. IRQ Mode can be Transparent,
Transparent invert, Converse and Converse & monitor EOI. The manual
reckons the choice depends on the IDE controller card. I can set
the latency timer too, per irq, which I've had on 0, 32 and 255
with no difference. "CPU to PCI write buffer", "PCI Master Write
Buffer" and "Pci Master Pre-fch [fetch I suppose] buffer" I've
twiddled with no effect either. The on-board NCR BIOS is disabled,
which has little effect I suppose. The CPU on 80 or 100MHz has no
effect.

As you probably can tell, I have little experience in dealing with
this kind of low-level system problem.. I hope I haven't forgotten
any things I've tried or information obtained, I've been plodding
on with this thing for months now :/

So far I'm presuming I'm a victim of obsolete or bogus hardware,
but I'd really appreciate information folks :) or even information
on how to get more information? I'd include dmesg and-so-on output
if it as easier, I'm not particularly networked at the moment you
see :)

cheers,

	=Ben



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