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LE(4)			    Kernel Interfaces Manual			 LE(4)

NAME
       le -- AMD Am7900	LANCE and Am79C9xx ILACC/PCnet Ethernet	interface dri-
       ver

SYNOPSIS
       To  compile  this  driver  into the kernel, place the following line in
       your kernel configuration file:

	     device le

       Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at	boot time,  place  the
       following line in loader.conf(5):

	     if_le_load="YES"

       For  ISA	 non-PnP adapters, the port address as well as the IRQ and the
       DRQ numbers have	to be specified	in /boot/device.hints:
       hint.le.0.at="isa"
       hint.le.0.port="0x280"
       hint.le.0.irq="10"
       hint.le.0.drq="0"

DEPRECATION NOTICE
       The le driver may not be	present	in FreeBSD 15.0	and later.

DESCRIPTION
       The le driver provides support for Ethernet adapters based on  the  AMD
       Am7990 and Am79C90 (CMOS, pin-compatible) Local Area Network Controller
       for Ethernet (LANCE) chips.

       The le driver also supports Ethernet adapters based on the AMD Am79C900
       Integrated  Local Area Communications Controller	(ILACC)	as well	as the
       Am79C9xx	PCnet family of	chips, which are  single-chip  implementations
       of  a  LANCE  chip and a	DMA engine.  The le driver treats all of these
       PCI bus Ethernet	chips as an AMD	Am79C970 PCnet-PCI and does  not  sup-
       port  the  additional  features	like the MII bus and burst mode	of AMD
       Am79C971	PCnet-FAST and greater chips.

       Generally, the le driver	aims at	supporting as many different chips  on
       as  many	 different platforms as	possible, partially at the cost	of the
       best performance	with some of these.

       The le driver supports reception	and transmission  of  extended	frames
       for  vlan(4).  Selective	reception of multicast Ethernet	frames is pro-
       vided by	a 64-bit mask; multicast destination addresses are hashed to a
       bit entry using the Ethernet CRC	function.

HARDWARE
   ISA
       The le driver supports ISA bus Ethernet adapters	which are based	on the
       following chips:

          AMD Am7990 and Am79C90 LANCE
          AMD Am79C960	PCnet-ISA
          AMD Am79C961	PCnet-ISA+
          AMD Am79C961A PCnet-ISA II

       This includes support for the following Ethernet	adapters:

       ISA non-PnP:

          BICC	Isolan
          Novell NE2100

       ISA PnP:

          AMD AM1500T/AM2100
          AMD PCnet-32
          AMD PCnet-ISA
          Allied Telesyn AT-1500
          Boca	LANCard	Combo
          Cabletron E2100 Series DNI
          Cabletron E2200 Single Chip
          Melco Inc. LGY-IV
          Novell NE2100
          Racal InterLan EtherBlaster

       The le driver does not support the selection of media types and options
       via ifconfig(8) with ISA	bus Ethernet adapters.

   PCI
       The PCI bus Ethernet chips supported by the le driver are:

          AMD Am53C974/Am79C970/Am79C974 PCnet-PCI
          AMD Am79C970A PCnet-PCI II
          AMD Am79C971	PCnet-FAST
          AMD Am79C972	PCnet-FAST+
          AMD Am79C973/Am79C975 PCnet-FAST III
          AMD Am79C976	PCnet-PRO
          AMD Am79C978	PCnet-Home

       This includes support for the following Ethernet	adapters:

          AcerLAN NIC P20
          Allied Telesyn AT-2450 and AT-2700 series
          VMware emulated AMD Am79C970A PCnet-PCI II interface

       The le driver supports the selection of the following media  types  via
       ifconfig(8) with	PCI bus	Ethernet adapters:

       autoselect   Enable autoselection of the	media type.

       10baseT/UTP  Select UTP media.

       10base5/AUI  Select AUI/BNC media.

       The following media option is supported with these media	types:

       full-duplex  Select full	duplex operation.

       Note that the le	driver does not	support	selecting 100Mbps (Fast	Ether-
       net) media types.

DIAGNOSTICS
       le%d:  overflow	 More packets came in from the Ethernet	than there was
       space in	the LANCE receive buffers.  Packets were missed.

       le%d: receive buffer error  The LANCE ran out of	buffer	space,	packet
       dropped.

       le%d:  lost carrier  The	Ethernet carrier disappeared during an attempt
       to transmit.  The LANCE will finish transmitting	 the  current  packet,
       but will	not automatically retry	transmission if	there is a collision.

       le%d:  excessive	collisions, tdr	%d  The	Ethernet was extremely busy or
       jammed, outbound	packets	were dropped after 16 attempts to retransmit.

       TDR is the abbreviation of "Time	Domain Reflectometry".	The optionally
       reported	TDR value is an	internal counter of the	interval  between  the
       start  of a transmission	and the	occurrence of a	collision.  This value
       can be used to determine	the distance from  the	Ethernet  tap  to  the
       point on	the Ethernet cable that	is shorted or open (unterminated).

       le%d:  dropping	chained	buffer	A packet did not fit into a single re-
       ceive buffer and	was dropped.  Since the	le  driver  allocates  buffers
       large enough to receive maximum sized Ethernet packets, this means some
       other  station  on  the LAN transmitted a packet	larger than allowed by
       the Ethernet standard.

       le%d: transmit buffer error  The	LANCE ran out of buffer	 space	before
       finishing the transmission of a packet.	If this	error occurs, the dri-
       ver software has	a bug.

       le%d: underflow	The LANCE ran out of buffer space before finishing the
       transmission  of	 a  packet.  If	this error occurs, the driver software
       has a bug.

       le%d: controller	failed to initialize	Driver	failed	to  start  the
       LANCE.  This is potentially a hardware failure.

       le%d:  memory  error  RAM failed	to respond within the timeout when the
       LANCE wanted to read or write it.  This is potentially a	hardware fail-
       ure.

       le%d: receiver disabled	The receiver of	the LANCE was turned  off  due
       to an error.

       le%d: transmitter disabled  The transmitter of the LANCE	was turned off
       due to an error.

SEE ALSO
       altq(4),	arp(4),	intro(4), netintro(4), vlan(4),	ifconfig(8)

HISTORY
       The le driver was ported	from NetBSD and	first appeared in FreeBSD 6.1.
       The  NetBSD  version in turn was	derived	from the le driver which first
       appeared	in 4.4BSD.

AUTHORS
       The le driver was ported	by Marius Strobl <marius@FreeBSD.org>.

FreeBSD	14.3			 June 21, 2023				 LE(4)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=le&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+14.3-RELEASE+and+Ports>

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