home | help 
VX(4)			  i386 Kernel Interfaces Manual 		   VX(4)

NAME
     vx -- PCI Ethernet device driver

SYNOPSIS
     device vx

DESCRIPTION
     The  vx  driver provides support for the 3Com 3c590 and 3c595 EtherLink III
     and Fast EtherLink III PCI Ethernet cards in 10 Mbps mode.  The medium  se-
     lection  can  be  influenced by the following link flags to the ifconfig(8)
     command:

     link0   Use the AUI port.
     link1   Use the BNC port.
     link2   Use the UTP port.

DIAGNOSTICS
     vx%d: not configured; kernel is built for only %d devices.  There	are  not
     enough  devices in the kernel configuration file for the number of adapters
     present in the system.  Add devices to the configuration file, rebuild  the
     kernel, and reboot.

     All  other  diagnostics  indicate either a hardware problem or a bug in the
     driver.

CAVEATS
     Some early-revision 3c590 cards are defective and suffer from many  receive
     overruns,	which cause lost packets.  The author has attempted to implement
     a test for it based on the information supplied by 3Com, but the  test  re-
     sulted mostly in spurious warnings.

     The performance of this driver is somewhat limited by the fact that it uses
     only  polled-mode I/O and does not make use of the bus-mastering capability
     of the cards.

BUGS
     The vx driver is known not to reset the adapter correctly following a  warm
     boot on some systems.

     The vx driver has not been exhaustively tested with all the models of cards
     that it claims to support.

SEE ALSO
     arp(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), ifconfig(8)

HISTORY
     The  vx  device  driver first appeared in FreeBSD 2.1.  It was derived from
     the ep driver, from which it inherits most of its limitations.

AUTHORS
     The vx device driver and  this  manual  page  were  written  by  Fred  Gray
     <fgray@rice.edu>,	based on the work of Herb Peyerl and with the assistance
     of numerous others.

FreeBSD 4.5			January 15, 1996			   VX(4)
home | help