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RealTek 8139 driver, 4. revision


Hi,


this is the fourth (and hopefully final =8^) revision of my RealTek 8139 driver. Compared to the 3. revision released way back in August, the only changes are in the documentation and the PC-specific .inl file, which now tells the driver to handle cache coherency in software. The same limitations that existed in August still apply:

a) The driver assumes the MAC address, media selection, etc. is
   configured via an EEPROM; these settings cannot be changed by the
   driver.

b) The 'twister' cannot be tuned.

c) Interrupt muxing like the Intel 82559 driver has is not supported.
   If multiple 8139s share one interrupt, chained interrupts have to
   be enabled for the HAL.

d) The multicast acceptance filter code is completely untested, since
   I have no multicast test bed. A kind soul recommended testing with
   an IPv6 network; however, I don't have that either.

e) All testing has been done on a custom architecture (Equator BSP),
   not on a i386 PC like the included (sample) .inl file might suggest.
   (This is because I totally failed to get eCos to boot on my PC at
   home). As a result, it may not work as expected on other platforms.

f) It's slow. The 8139 is a low-cost chip that makes heavy demands on
   the CPU. You need a fast target to get anywhere near 100MBit/s
   performance with this chip (this is not really a driver problem -
   Linux on the same hardware is only marginally faster).

One more thing - RedHat has now confirmed my copyright assignment, so
the driver can now go into the CVS repository.

Enjoy,
--
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|     Eric Doenges              |     DynaPel Laboratories GmbH    |
|     Tel: +49 89 962428 23     |     Fraunhoferstrasse 9/2        |
|     Fax: +49 89 962428 90     |     D - 85737 Ismaning, Germany  |
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