Re: NETGEAR FA310TX problems

[Marty Connor <mdc@thinguin.org>]

On 6/20/2000 7:58 AM Dennis E. Arce dennis@bournetech.com wrote:
>I have the came Card, FA310TX REV-D2 with LC82169C on it.
>Thanks.  Is there a netboot version you know works with it for the time 
>being?

I don't know too much about netboot, but I'm sure someone else on the 
list will be able to help with that.

I would be curious about your machine, however.  I mainly have P200s, 
which are slow compared to more modern machines.  I have a theory that 
there are residual timing loops based on (i=10000;i>0;i--) kind of stuff 
that may be causing problems on faster machines.  I will build a PIII 550 
machine to test this theory and to debug a bit better.

I replaced most of that kind of loop with loops based on 
(timeout=currenttime() + 1*TICKS_PER_SECOND).  When looking at the code, 
it appears there are still some of the old "spin loops" in the logic for 
reading the MAC address on the LC82169C.  We could easily test this.  
Here's some of the code in question:

  /* Hardware Address retrieval method for LC82C168 */
  if (vendor == PCI_VENDOR_ID_LINKSYS && dev_id == 
PCI_DEVICE_ID_DEC_TULIP) {
    for (i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
      int value, boguscnt = 100000;
      outl(0x600 | i, ioaddr + 0x98);
      do
        value = inl(ioaddr + CSR9);
      while (value < 0  && --boguscnt > 0);

notice that "boguscnt = 100000".  Just for testing, try adding a zero to 
make it 1000000, which would give more time for retrieval of the data.  
We should probably replace this logic with the timeout logic as I've done 
elsewhere, but this could help debug the situation.  Also, knowing the 
value of boguscnt after the loop might tell us if the loops is 
terminating before the data is retrieved.  We could also put some printf 
statements in to look at the data.  I'm betting on a timing bug, however.

It will take me a little time to get back up to speed and to assemble my 
testing facility, but perhaps this "virtual debugging" will be of some 
help.

Regards,

Marty

P.S. Any HAM Radio operators on the list? 73's 


---
   Name: Martin D. Connor
US Mail: Entity Cyber, Inc.; P.O. Box 391827; Cambridge, MA 02139; USA
  Voice: (617) 491-6935, Fax: (617) 491-7046 
  Email: mdc@thinguin.org
    Web: http://www.thinguin.org/


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