SUMMARY: getting DE500 ethernet card to run at 100 Mbits

From: Bob Vickers <bobv_at_dcs.rhbnc.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 10:16:01 +0000 (GMT)

Dear Tru64ers,

Thanks go to
  Michael
  Stuart
  Walter North
  Joe Fletcher
  Brian Hostetter
  Serguei Patchkovskii
  Kevin Partin
  Phil Farrell
  Jim Williams
  Nikola Milutinovic
for their varied responses. Getting DE500 cards to work at full
speed is obviously a bit of a black art: there are 4 places to set the
speed and most people suggest using at least 3 of these places (I had only
done 2!).

Here are the 4 places:

(1) at the console prompt
>>> set ewe0_mode = Fast
I had already done this. Some people were confused by it being ewe0_mode
rather than ewa0_mode; this is because we have 5 network cards on this
machine (don't ask why!).

(2) In /etc/rc.config set 'speed 100' in the ifconfig parameters. I hadn't
done this, and on reflection that was a mistake.

(3) In /etc/inet.local use
  lan_config -i tu4 -a 0 -m utp -s 100 -x 0
I had already done this, assuming it to be equivalent to setting the
ifconfig parameters.

(4) Set the speed on the switch. I can't do this because we have a hub
rather than a switch and it does not have a management interface.

Other suggestions were:
(a) change the patch lead
(b) set interface to full duplex (not appropriate with a hub)
(c) upgrade the firmware (we upgraded last summer so I doubt if this is
the problem)

As I said I'm not in a position to experiment, but I have changed
rc.config to set the speed, and I'll keep my fingers crossed that this
works next time we have a power failure or reboot (Tru64 is just too
damned reliable, so it may be a while!). One possible explanation of what
was happening is that ifconfig brings the link up in 10 Mbit mode which
confuses the hub's auto-negotiation, so that the lan_config command a bit
later is ineffective.

Bob
==============================================================
Bob Vickers R.Vickers_at_dcs.rhbnc.ac.uk
Dept of Computer Science, Royal Holloway, University of London
WWW: http://www.cs.rhbnc.ac.uk/home/bobv
Phone: +44 1784 443691
Received on Mon Feb 07 2000 - 10:17:20 NZDT

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