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Re: RealTek 8139 driver, 4. revision


On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 08:59, Eric Doenges wrote:
> Hi,
> 

Did you mean to attach the driver or send a URL?

> 
> this is the fourth (and hopefully final =8^) revision of my RealTek
> 8139 driver. Compared to the 3. revision released way back in August,
> the only changes are in the documentation and the PC-specific
> .inl file, which now tells the driver to handle cache coherency in
> software. The same limitations that existed in August still apply:
> 
> a) The driver assumes the MAC address, media selection, etc. is
>     configured via an EEPROM; these settings cannot be changed by the
>     driver.
> 
> b) The 'twister' cannot be tuned.
> 
> c) Interrupt muxing like the Intel 82559 driver has is not supported.
>     If multiple 8139s share one interrupt, chained interrupts have to
>     be enabled for the HAL.
> 
> d) The multicast acceptance filter code is completely untested, since
>     I have no multicast test bed. A kind soul recommended testing with
>     an IPv6 network; however, I don't have that either.
> 
> e) All testing has been done on a custom architecture (Equator BSP),
>     not on a i386 PC like the included (sample) .inl file might suggest.
>     (This is because I totally failed to get eCos to boot on my PC at
>     home). As a result, it may not work as expected on other platforms.
> 
> f) It's slow. The 8139 is a low-cost chip that makes heavy demands on
>     the CPU. You need a fast target to get anywhere near 100MBit/s
>     performance with this chip (this is not really a driver problem -
>     Linux on the same hardware is only marginally faster).
> 
> One more thing - RedHat has now confirmed my copyright assignment, so
> the driver can now go into the CVS repository.
> 
> Enjoy,
-- 
Gary Thomas <gary@mlbassoc.com>
MLB Associates


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