3C59x problems

Chris Evans (chris@jcr04.lmh.ox.ac.uk)
Sat, 23 Mar 1996 11:53:35 +0000 (GMT)


I'm running a PCI 3C590 with 8k buffer 1:1 tx:rx split, on a P100 running
Linux 1.3.77.

When transferring data FAST over the ethernet to a local large, powerful
host, I get severe problems when *sending*. Sending is normally okay,
problems are just occurred when the other end is capable of maintaining a
fast transfer rate.

For example, I can receive from this other host at ~820k/sec. When
attempting a send to it, which at a guess would go at a similar rate, I
get almost immediately:

Mar 23 11:18:57 jcr04 kernel: eth0: transmit timed out, tx_status 00
status e000.

This is with a large (4.4Mb) file. The linux source, 1.3.77 in fact :)

This hangs the ftp and is entirely reproducible. Although the ftp just
sits there until killed, the card recovers well and no reboot is needed.

ftp> send linux-1.3.77.tar.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for linux-1.3.77.tar.gz.
eth0: transmit timed out, tx_status 00 status e000.

5404 bytes of data tend to arrive at the destination before it's game over.

Other illustrations:

ftp> get linux-1.3.77.tar.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for linux-1.3.77.tar.gz (4390942
bytes).226 Transfer complete.
4390942 bytes received in 5.64 secs (7.6e+02 Kbytes/sec)

(no problems)

Ummmm.... that's all the info I have at the moment. Apart from the fact
that copying via a pcnfs mounted dir, a 5.6Mb file to a slow 386 with
NE2000 clone card on it, is _fine_, managing about 350kb/s.

Cheers,
-- Chris

Oh, PS: Another Linux flaw, my keyboard has just died, it's sending
ctrl+alt+f<n> incorrectly as the text "[A" (for ctrl+alt+f1), about 4
times out of every 5. I'll check to see if I have keyboard timeouts *as
well*. :-)