NAME

ec − 3COM IE Ethernet Controller interface

DESCRIPTION

The ec interface provides STREAMS access to the 3COM IE family of 10 MB Ethernet controllers. 

The driver is provided with IEEE 802.2 LLC Class 1 and Ethernet encapsulation of data by the llc(7) driver.  All communication with the ec driver is done via function calls between ec and llc.

The ec driver supports promiscuous mode, as configured by llc. It receives and understands “trailer” packets but does not generate them. Loopback is handled between the ec and llc drivers, even though the 3COM board is capable of loopback. 

Configuration

The space.c file provides a mechanism for specifying the IE board operating parameters to the driver.  If a different I/O port base address or interrupt vector are necessary, the space.c file should be updated accordingly. 

SEE ALSO

arp(7), ip(7), llc(7). 

DIAGNOSTICS

ecinit: CSR read failed from 3COM board: %x. 
The driver was unable to read the expected data from the control/status register on the board.

ecinit: XMT read failed from 3COM board: %x. 
The driver was unable to read the expected data from the transmit register on the board.

ecinit: RCV read failed from 3COM board: %x. 
The driver was unable to read the expected data from the receive register on the board.

ecinit: 3COM board returns bad ethernet address. 
The driver was unable to read a legal 3COM Ethernet address from the prom on the board. 

3COM board not present or in error. 
The driver refuses to initialize the board because one or more of the previous errors suggests that the board is not working.

WARNING

The COM 3C501 board and ec driver are not capable of high performance operation.  This is due to a limitation in the hardware and not a bug in the driver.  Use with INTER­ACTIVE NFS is discouraged. 

\*U  —  Version 1.0