15 Apr
2004
15 Apr
'04
12:49 p.m.
>>>> "Antonio" == Antonio Carlini
<arcarlini(a)iee.org> writes:
> As for a Pro being the easiest route, I
wouldn't say so. The bus
> architecture is completely unrelated to that of any other PDP11,
> and ugly/messy/baroque/bogus at that. There is NO DMA. The
> Ethernet card uses the worst Ethernet chip I know.
Antonio> Out of interest, which chip would that be?
Intel 82586, if I remember right. It uses queues, not rings, for its
commands. There are race conditions in the programming interface so
that the chip sometimes sets a queue to empty at the same time that
the driver puts a new entry on the queue, which forces the driver to
notice that and repair the confusion.
This is why real Ethernet chips use rings.
paul