WE(4) BSD Programmer's Manual WE(4)NAME
we - Western Digital / Standard Microsystem Corporation WD8003, WD8013,
Ethercard PLUS, Elite, Ultra, EtherEZ and 3Com 3C503 Ethernet interfaces.
SYNOPSIS
we0 at isa? port 0x280 iomem 0xd0000 iosiz 16384
DESCRIPTION
The we interface provides access to a 10 Mb/s Ethernet network. It sup-
ports three types of hardware interface: the Western Digital/SMC
8003/8013 (Elite) series, the SMC Ultra and EtherEZ, and the 3Com 3C503.
The Western Digital/SMC Elite and SMC Ultra and EtherEZ cards use a block
of 32 I/O ports in the range 0x200 through 0x3e0. The block must be
aligned on a 32 port boundary. The hardware interrupt level is detected
at autoconfiguration time. The base port and memory address are set via
jumpers or a manufacturer-provided setup program. A memory size of up to
64 KB is supported, although most cards have 16 KB of memory; supported
values are 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB and 64 KB.
The 3Com 3C503 uses a block of 16 I/O ports beginning with one of the
these bases: 0x250, 0x280, 0x2a0, 0x2e0, 0x300, 0x310, 0x330, 0x350. The
hardware interrupt level is chosen during autoconfiguration. It uses an
8 kilobyte shared memory area at one of the following addresses: 0xc8000,
0xcc000, 0xd8000, or 0xdc000. If the memory address is specified in the
configuration file, that address will be selected; otherwise, the address
specified by jumpers will be used.
The method for selection of the Ethernet connection type and other op-
tions differ for the three types of cards.
On the WD/SMC Elite (8003/8013) cards, the connection type is set via
jumpers on the card or by the manufacturer-supplied setup program. By
default, these cards run in 16-bit mode if a 16-bit card is installed in
a 16-bit slot; this is desirable for best performance. If the configured
iosiz is 8192, the card will be used in 8-bit mode. If 16-bit operation
causes problems for 8-bit cards in the same 128 KB memory segment, the
card can be left in 8-bit mode except while copying data to or from the
card by setting the IFF_LINK2 flag (using the link2 option to
ifconfig(8)). 8-bit operation can be forced at all times by setting the
IFF_LINK1 flag. (Currently, this option may result in extremely poor
performance due to packet loss or corruption.) Finally, if the kernel is
booted with autoconfiguration debugging set to -a (using -autodebug -a,
see boot(8)), the driver asks whether to run in 16-bit mode, and 8-bit
mode may be selected.
The connection type for the SMC Ultra and EtherEZ cards is specified us-
ing the manufacturer-supplied setup program and/or ifconfig(8). The
IFF_LINK2 flag (automatically set by the driver, but can be cleared) dis-
ables card memory except during access. This is reported to prevent a
bus problem that results in corrupted data on IDE drives. The SMC Ultra
and EtherEZ cards use 16-bit mode when installed in a 16-bit slot.
Each of the host's network addresses is specified at boot time with an
SIOCSIFADDR ioctl. The we interface employs the address resolution pro-
tocol described in arp(4) to dynamically map between Internet and Ether-
net addresses on the local network.
MEDIA SELECTION
Media options available are listed and manipulated via standard options
to the ifconfig(8) command.
DIAGNOSTICS
The following diagnostics may be printed during autoconfiguration:
we%d: illegal memory size.
Invalid iosiz specification in kernel config file.
we%d: illegal memory alignment.
Invalid iomem specification in kernel config file.
we%d: %s dual port RAM address error
The iomem specified in the kernel config file conflicts with some other
device on the bus, or the Ethernet board may be bad. The board may be in
8-bit mode but in a 128 KB block containing a 16-bit memory device.
we%d: no irq available for %s
Automatic interrupt selection was enabled, but all usable interrupts had
already been claimed by other devices.
SEE ALSOintro(4), inet(4), arp(4), ifconfig(8)BUGS
Some cards are not recognized if, during bootup, the card isn't attached
to a network.
HISTORY
The we driver first appeared in Berkeley Networking-2.
BSDI BSD/OS February 2, 1995 2