My client has been using the E100 Intel card that came with his embedded mobo. When using the RTnet driver (eepro100, an antique version of the Becker driver which did not do firmware download to the card) they were experience strange TX lockups which could only be cured by a power cycle.
It was either trying to fix the eepro100 driver (and maybe download firmware borrowed from the newer E100 driver) or port the stock Linux e100 driver which had no lockup issued, quod fecit.
Here are the steps (in e100.c):
- alter Makefile, Makefile.in from RTnet;
- junk Ethtool code, disable IPv6;
- junk eeprom write code;
- junk loopback test code;
- rip out the Linux stack calls and replace with RTDM if applicable;
- ditto for skb->rtskb;
- replace schedule_work with a semaphore and rtdm_nrtsig_pend()
- kmalloc / kcalloc / kzalloc wrapped for RTDM;
- pre-allocate a pool of 256 rtskbs for RX and initialise it;
- connect to STACK_manager in e100_open;
- added I/O RT task which is the RTnet bottom half -- waits on a semaphore, calls e100_poll() and if packets received signals RTnet to process the packets;
- changed the ISR (legacy) to signal the semaphore above is IRQ belongs to the driver;
- disabled set MAC code -- RTnet does not support it;
- disabled change MTU code -- RTnet does not support it;
- modify RTnet's configure to have "--enable-e100".
I spent most of the time trying to compile the hacked code. After I got an IRQ kicking I spent a lot of time making sure the driver is stable.
The ported driver (base kernel version is 2.6.29) is here.
-ulianov
