Re: [PATCH] #2 VIA Rhine stalls: TxAbort handling

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Fri, 17 May 2002, 'Roger Luethi' wrote:

> > I think one has to <somehow> find that the chip has halted besides
> > the current way (noticing that it can't transmit anymore). I don't
> 
> There seems to be a misunderstanding. We already get an interrupt and a
> status to indicate what kind of problem occured. Thanks to Shing's recent
> posting we even have confirmed information about what events stop the Tx
> engine. _Plus_ there is a bit flag TXON in a chip status register which
> indicates whether the Tx engine is active.
>
[SNIPPED...]
> 
> > In the chip-halted work-around that everybody seems to use now,
> > reprogram it from scratch. The last program operation being to remove
> > loop-back. I don't even know if this chip can be set to loop-back,
> > though, so the whole idea may be moot.
> 
> It can be set to loopback, but I'm not keen on having my chip reprogrammed
> by every traffic burst (excessive collisions -> abort). Is that really the
> fashion of the year now?

Well, maybe the fashion of the day. Do `grep karound *.c` in
../linux/drivers/net and see all the 'workarounds' that exist for
chip problems. Some of the problems are induced by the coding and
most are real hardware problems.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson

Penguin : Linux version 2.4.18 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).

                 Windows-2000/Professional isn't.