NAME
wb
—
Winbond W89C840F Fast Ethernet device
driver
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:
device miibus
device wb
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):
if_wb_load="YES"
DEPRECATION NOTICE
Thewb
driver is not present in FreeBSD
13.0 and later. See
https://github.com/freebsd/fcp/blob/master/fcp-0101.md for more information.
DESCRIPTION
The wb
driver provides support for PCI
Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers based on the Winbond W89C840F
Fast Ethernet controller chip. The 840F should not be confused with the
940F, which is an NE2000 clone and only supports 10Mbps speeds.
The Winbond controller uses bus master DMA and is designed to be a DEC 'tulip' workalike. It differs from the standard DEC design in several ways: the control and status registers are spaced 4 bytes apart instead of 8, and the receive filter is programmed through registers rather than by downloading a special setup frame via the transmit DMA engine. Using an external PHY, the Winbond chip supports both 10 and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex.
The wb
driver supports the following media
types:
- autoselect
- Enable autoselection of the media type and options. This is only supported if the PHY chip attached to the Winbond controller supports NWAY autonegotiation. The user can manually override the autoselected mode by adding media options to the /etc/rc.conf file.
- 10baseT/UTP
- Set 10Mbps operation. The mediaopt option can also be used to select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes.
- 100baseTX
- Set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation. The mediaopt option can also be used to select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes.
The wb
driver supports the following media
options:
- full-duplex
- Force full duplex operation.
- half-duplex
- Force half duplex operation.
Note that the 100baseTX media type is only available if supported by the adapter. For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).
HARDWARE
The wb
driver supports Winbond W89C840F
based Fast Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers including:
- Trendware TE100-PCIE
DIAGNOSTICS
- wb%d: couldn't map memory
- A fatal initialization error has occurred.
- wb%d: couldn't map interrupt
- A fatal initialization error has occurred.
- wb%d: watchdog timeout
- The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with the network connection (cable).
- wb%d: no memory for rx list
- The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring.
- wb%d: no memory for tx list
- The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring when allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf chain into a cluster.
- wb%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0
- This message applies only to adapters which support power management. Some
operating systems place the controller in low power mode when shutting
down, and some PCI BIOSes fail to bring the chip out of this state before
configuring it. The controller loses all of its PCI configuration in the
D3 state, so if the BIOS does not set it back to full power mode in time,
it will not be able to configure it correctly. The driver tries to detect
this condition and bring the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state,
but this may not be enough to return the driver to a fully operational
condition. If you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to
attach the device as a network interface, you will have to perform second
warm boot to have the device properly configured.
Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another operating system. If you power down your system prior to booting FreeBSD, the card should be configured correctly.
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The wb
device driver first appeared in
FreeBSD 3.0.
AUTHORS
The wb
driver was written by
Bill Paul
<wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu>.
BUGS
The Winbond chip seems to behave strangely in some cases when the
link partner switches modes. If for example both sides are set to 10Mbps
half-duplex, and the other end is changed to 100Mbps full-duplex, the
Winbond's receiver suddenly starts writing trash all over the RX
descriptors. The wb
driver handles this by forcing a
reset of both the controller chip and attached PHY. This is drastic, but it
appears to be the only way to recover properly from this condition.