1 .\" Copyright (c) 1997, 1998
2 .\" Bill Paul <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu>. All rights reserved.
4 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
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36 .Nd "RealTek 8129/8139 Fast Ethernet device driver"
38 To compile this driver into the kernel,
39 place the following lines in your
40 kernel configuration file:
41 .Bd -ragged -offset indent
46 Alternatively, to load the driver as a
47 module at boot time, place the following line in
49 .Bd -literal -offset indent
55 driver provides support for PCI Ethernet adapters and embedded
56 controllers based on the RealTek 8129 and 8139 Fast Ethernet controller
59 The RealTek 8129/8139 series controllers use bus master DMA but do not use a
60 descriptor-based data transfer mechanism.
62 single fixed size ring buffer from which packets must be copied
64 For transmission, there are only four outbound packet
65 address registers which require all outgoing packets to be stored
66 as contiguous buffers.
67 Furthermore, outbound packet buffers must
68 be longword aligned or else transmission will fail.
70 The 8129 differs from the 8139 in that the 8139 has an internal
71 PHY which is controlled through special direct access registers
72 whereas the 8129 uses an external PHY via an MII bus.
74 supports both 10 and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex.
75 The 8129 can support the same speeds and modes given an appropriate
78 Note: support for the 8139C+ chip is provided by the
84 driver supports the following media types:
85 .Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
87 Enable autoselection of the media type and options.
89 supported if the PHY chip attached to the RealTek controller
90 supports NWAY autonegotiation.
91 The user can manually override
92 the autoselected mode by adding media options to the
99 option can also be used to select either
105 Set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation.
108 option can also be used to select either
117 driver supports the following media options:
118 .Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
120 Force full duplex operation.
122 Force half duplex operation.
125 Note that the 100baseTX media type is only available if supported
127 For more information on configuring this device, see
130 Adapters supported by the
138 EN1207D (MPX 5030/5038; RealTek 8139 clone)
140 Allied Telesyn AT2550
142 Allied Telesyn AT2500TX
146 BUFFALO (Melco INC.) LPC-CB-CLX (CardBus)
150 CompUSA no-name 10/100 PCI Ethernet NIC
154 Corega FEtherII CB-TXD
156 D-Link DFE-520TX (rev. C1)
166 Edimax EP-4103DL CardBus
168 Encore ENL832-TX 10/100 M PCI
170 Farallon NetLINE 10/100 PCI
174 GigaFast Ethernet EE100-AXP
176 KTX-9130TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet
180 Longshine LCS-8038TX-R
182 NDC Communications NE100TX-E
184 Netronix Inc.\& EA-1210 NetEther 10/100
186 Nortel Networks 10/100BaseTX
198 SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI 1211-TX
200 SOHO (PRAGMATIC) UE-1211C
203 .Bl -tag -width indent
204 .It Va dev.rl.%unit.prefer_iomap
205 This tunable controls which register mapping should be used on the
207 A non-zero value enables I/O space register mapping.
208 For controllers that have no I/O space register mapping this tunable
209 should be set to 0 to use memory space register mapping.
210 The default value is 1 to use I/O space register mapping.
211 .It Va dev.rl.%unit.twister_enable
212 Non-zero value enables the long cable tuning on the specified device.
217 .It "rl%d: couldn't map memory"
218 A fatal initialization error has occurred.
219 .It "rl%d: couldn't map interrupt"
220 A fatal initialization error has occurred.
221 .It "rl%d: watchdog timeout"
222 The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with
223 the network connection (cable).
224 .It "rl%d: no memory for rx list"
225 The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring.
226 .It "rl%d: no memory for tx list"
227 The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring when
228 allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf chain into a cluster.
229 .It "rl%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0"
230 This message applies only to adapters which support power
232 Some operating systems place the controller in low power
233 mode when shutting down, and some PCI BIOSes fail to bring the chip
234 out of this state before configuring it.
235 The controller loses all of
236 its PCI configuration in the D3 state, so if the BIOS does not set
237 it back to full power mode in time, it will not be able to configure it
239 The driver tries to detect this condition and bring
240 the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state, but this may not be
241 enough to return the driver to a fully operational condition.
243 you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to attach
244 the device as a network interface, you will have to perform second
245 warm boot to have the device properly configured.
247 Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another
249 If you power down your system prior to booting
251 the card should be configured correctly.
262 .%B The RealTek 8129, 8139 and 8139C+ datasheets
263 .%U https://www.realtek.com
268 device driver first appeared in
273 driver was written by
274 .An Bill Paul Aq Mt wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu .
276 Since outbound packets must be longword aligned, the transmit
277 routine has to copy an unaligned packet into an mbuf cluster buffer
279 The driver abuses the fact that the cluster buffer
280 pool is allocated at system startup time in a contiguous region starting
282 Since cluster buffers are 2048 bytes, they are
283 longword aligned by definition.
284 The driver probably should not be
285 depending on this characteristic.
287 The RealTek data sheets are of especially poor quality,
288 and there is a lot of information missing
289 particularly concerning the receiver operation.
291 important fact that the data sheets fail to mention relates to the
292 way in which the chip fills in the receive buffer.
294 is posted to signal that a frame has been received, it is possible that
295 another frame might be in the process of being copied into the receive
296 buffer while the driver is busy handling the first one.
298 manages to finish processing the first frame before the chip is done
299 DMAing the rest of the next frame, the driver may attempt to process
300 the next frame in the buffer before the chip has had a chance to finish
303 The driver can check for an incomplete frame by inspecting the frame
304 length in the header preceding the actual packet data: an incomplete
305 frame will have the magic length of 0xFFF0.
306 When the driver encounters
307 this value, it knows that it has finished processing all currently
309 Neither this magic value nor its significance are
310 documented anywhere in the RealTek data sheets.