- Change to the same transmit scheme as the PNIC driver.
- Dynamically set the cache alignment, and set burst size the same as
the PNIC driver in mx_init().
- Enable 'store and forward' mode by default. This is the slowest option
and it does reduce 100Mbps performance somewhat, but it's the most
reliable setting I can find. I'm more interested in having the driver
work reliably than trying to squeeze the best performance out of it.
The reason I'm doing this is that on *some* systems you may see a lot
of transmit underruns (which I can't explain: these are *fast* test
systems) and these errors seem to cause unusual and decidedly
non-tulip-like behavior. In normal 10Mbps mode, performance is fine
(you can easily saturate a 10Mbps link).
Also tweak some of the other drivers:
- Increase the size of the TX ring for the Winbond, ASIX, VIA Rhine
and PNIC drivers.
- Set a larger value for ifq_maxlen in the ThunderLAN driver. The setting
of TL_TX_LIST_CNT - 1 is too low (the ThunderLAN driver only allocates
20 transmit descriptors, and I don't want to fiddle with that now
because the ThunderLAN's descriptor structure is an oddball size
compared to the others).
- In wb_rxeof(), if the received packet is less than MINCLSIZE bytes,
copy it to an mbuf chain so as to be more frugal in our use of mbuf
clusters.
- The Winbond chip, like the ASIX, wants the 'TX interrupt request'
bit set in the _first_ fragment of a transmitted frame, not the
last. (At least the Winbond manual states this unambiguously; too
bad I wasn't paying attention when I read it the first time.)
- Turn off the transmit threshold mechanism (initialize the threshold
to 0). This effectively puts the chip in 'store and forward' mode
which seems to cut down on transmit errors a little. It may also
reduce transmit performace a bit, but I'm willing to do that if it
means better reliability.
PCI fast ethernet adapters, plus man pages.
if_pn.c: Netgear FA310TX model D1, LinkSys LNE100TX, Matrox FastNIC 10/100,
various other PNIC devices
if_mx.c: NDC Communications SOHOware SFA100 (Macronix 98713A), various
other boards based on the Macronix 98713, 98713A, 98715, 98715A
and 98725 chips
if_vr.c: D-Link DFE530-TX, other boards based on the VIA Rhine and
Rhine II chips (note: the D-Link and certain other cards
that actually use a Rhine II chip still return the PCI
device ID of the Rhine I. I don't know why, and it doesn't
really matter since the driver treats both chips the same
anyway.)
if_wb.c: Trendware TE100-PCIE and various other cards based on the
Winbond W89C840F chip (the Trendware card is identical to
the sample boards Winbond sent me, so who knows how many
clones there are running around)
All drivers include support for ifmedia, BPF and hardware multicast
filtering.
Also updated GENERIC, LINT, RELNOTES.TXT, userconfig and
sysinstall device list.
I also have a driver for the ASIX AX88140A in the works.
