NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

     pcn -- AMD PCnet/PCI fast ethernet device driver

SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

     device miibus
     device pcn

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

     The pcn driver provides support for PCI ethernet adapters and embedded
     controllers based on the AMD PCnet/FAST, PCnet/FAST+, PCnet/FAST III,
     PCnet/PRO and PCnet/Home ethernet controller chips.

     The PCnet/PCI chips include a 100Mbps ethernet MAC and support both a
     serial and MII-compliant transceiver interface.  They use a bus master
     DMA and a scatter/gather descriptor scheme.  The AMD chips provide a
     mechanism for zero-copy receive, providing good performance in server
     environments.  Receive address filtering is provided using a single perfect
 filter entry for the station address and a 64-bit multicast hash table.


     The pcn driver supports the following media types:

     autoselect   Enable autoselection of the media type and options.  The
		  user can manually override the autoselected mode by adding
		  media options to rc.conf(5).

     10baseT/UTP  Set 10Mbps operation.  The ifconfig(8) mediaopt option can
		  also be used to select either `full-duplex' or `half-duplex'
		  modes.

     100baseTX	  Set 100Mbps (fast ethernet) operation.  The ifconfig(8)
		  mediaopt option can also be used to select either
		  `full-duplex' or `half-duplex' modes.

     The pcn driver supports the following media options:

     full-duplex  Force full duplex operation

     half-duplex  Force half duplex operation.

     For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

DIAGNOSTICS    [Toc]    [Back]

     pcn%d: couldn't map ports/memory  A fatal initialization error has
     occurred.

     pcn%d: couldn't map interrupt  A fatal initialization error has occurred.

     pcn%d: watchdog timeout  The device has stopped responding to the network,
 or there is a problem with the network connection (e.g. a cable
     fault).

     pcn%d: no memory for rx list  The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for
     the receiver ring.

     pcn%d: no memory for tx list  The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for
     the transmitter ring when allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf
     chain into a cluster.

     pcn%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0	This message applies
     only to adapters which support power management.  Some operating systems
     place the controller in low power mode when shutting down, and some PCI
     BIOSes fail to bring the chip out of this state before configuring it.
     The controller loses all of its PCI configuration in the D3 state, so if
     the BIOS does not set it back to full power mode in time, it will not be
     able to configure it correctly.  The driver tries to detect this condition
 and bring the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state, but this
     may not be enough to return the driver to a fully operational condition.
     If you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to attach the
     device as a network interface, you will have to perform a warm boot to
     have the device properly configured.

     Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another operating
 system.  If you power down your system prior to booting FreeBSD,
     the card should be configured correctly.

SEE ALSO    [Toc]    [Back]

     arp(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), ifconfig(8)

     AMD PCnet/FAST, PCnet/FAST+ and PCnet/Home datasheets,
     http://www.amd.com.

HISTORY    [Toc]    [Back]

     The pcn device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 4.3.

AUTHORS    [Toc]    [Back]

     The pcn driver was written by Bill Paul <[email protected]>.


FreeBSD 5.2.1		      September 18, 2000		 FreeBSD 5.2.1