1 .\" Copyright (c) 1997, 1998
2 .\" Bill Paul <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu>. All rights reserved.
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31 .\" $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man4/rl.4,v 1.15.2.8 2003/02/17 21:20:39 trhodes Exp $
32 .\" $DragonFly: src/share/man/man4/rl.4,v 1.3 2004/03/11 12:28:55 hmp Exp $
39 .Nd RealTek 8129/8139 fast ethernet device driver
45 driver provides support for PCI ethernet adapters and embedded
46 controllers based on the RealTek 8129 and 8139 fast ethernet controller
48 This includes the Allied Telesyn AT2550, Farallon NetLINE 10/100 PCI,
50 NDC Communications NE100TX-E, OvisLink LEF-8129TX, OvisLink LEF-8139TX,
51 Netronix Inc. EA-1210 NetEther 10/100, KTX-9130TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet,
52 Encore ENL832-TX 10/100 M PCI, Longshine LCS-8038TX-R, the
53 SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI 1211-TX, and various other cheap adapters.
54 It also supports the Accton EN1207D which has a
55 chip labeled MPX5030 (or MPX5038) which appears to be a RealTek workalike.
57 The RealTek controllers use bus master DMA but do not use a
58 descriptor-based data transfer mechanism.
60 single fixed size ring buffer from which packets must be copied
62 For transmission, there are only four outbound packet
63 address registers which require all outgoing packets to be stored
64 as contiguous buffers.
65 Furthermore, outbound packet buffers must
66 be longword aligned or else transmission will fail.
68 The 8129 differs from the 8139 in that the 8139 has an internal
69 PHY which is controlled through special direct access registers
70 whereas the 8129 uses an external PHY via an MII bus.
72 supports both 10 and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex.
73 The 8129 can support the same speeds and modes given an appropriate
78 driver supports the following media types:
80 .Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
82 Enable autoselection of the media type and options.
84 supported if the PHY chip attached to the RealTek controller
85 supports NWAY autonegotiation.
86 The user can manually override
87 the autoselected mode by adding media options to the
94 option can also be used to select either
100 Set 100Mbps (fast ethernet) operation.
103 option can also be used to select either
112 driver supports the following media options:
114 .Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
116 Force full duplex operation
118 Force half duplex operation.
121 Note that the 100baseTX media type is only available if supported
123 For more information on configuring this device, see
127 .It "rl%d: couldn't map memory"
128 A fatal initialization error has occurred.
129 .It "rl%d: couldn't map interrupt"
130 A fatal initialization error has occurred.
131 .It "rl%d: watchdog timeout"
132 The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with
133 the network connection (cable).
134 .It "rl%d: no memory for rx list"
135 The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring.
136 .It "rl%d: no memory for tx list"
137 The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring when
138 allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf chain into a cluster.
139 .It "rl%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0"
140 This message applies only to adapters which support power
142 Some operating systems place the controller in low power
143 mode when shutting down, and some PCI BIOSes fail to bring the chip
144 out of this state before configuring it.
145 The controller loses all of
146 its PCI configuration in the D3 state, so if the BIOS does not set
147 it back to full power mode in time, it won't be able to configure it
149 The driver tries to detect this condition and bring
150 the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state, but this may not be
151 enough to return the driver to a fully operational condition.
153 you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to attach
154 the device as a network interface, you will have to perform second
155 warm boot to have the device properly configured.
157 Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another
159 If you power down your system prior to booting
161 the card should be configured correctly.
170 .%B The RealTek 8129 and 8139 datasheets
171 .%O ftp.realtek.com.tw:/lancard/data sheet
176 device driver first appeared in
181 driver was written by
182 .An Bill Paul Aq wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu .
184 Since outbound packets must be longword aligned, the transmit
185 routine has to copy an unaligned packet into an mbuf cluster buffer
187 The driver abuses the fact that the cluster buffer
188 pool is allocated at system startup time in a contiguous region starting
190 Since cluster buffers are 2048 bytes, they are
191 longword aligned by definition.
192 The driver probably should not be
193 depending on this characteristic.
195 The RealTek data sheets are of especially poor quality,
196 and there is a lot of information missing
197 particularly concerning the receiver operation.
199 important fact that the data sheets fail to mention relates to the
200 way in which the chip fills in the receive buffer.
202 is posted to signal that a frame has been received, it is possible that
203 another frame might be in the process of being copied into the receive
204 buffer while the driver is busy handling the first one.
206 manages to finish processing the first frame before the chip is done
207 DMAing the rest of the next frame, the driver may attempt to process
208 the next frame in the buffer before the chip has had a chance to finish
211 The driver can check for an incomplete frame by inspecting the frame
212 length in the header preceding the actual packet data: an incomplete
213 frame will have the magic length of 0xFFF0.
214 When the driver encounters
215 this value, it knows that it has finished processing all currently
217 Neither this magic value nor its significance are
218 documented anywhere in the RealTek data sheets.