Broadcom BCM5901 NIC

Hi,

my new laptop (IBM Thinkpad G40) has an integrated NIC made by broadcom. It's a BCM5901 card for which support was added in the tg3 driver a few weeks ago (both in 2.4 and 2.6-test). However, the device doesn't work, it insmods just fine and claims the hardware, but the machine never responds to ping messages and the led indicating network activity is never activated.

Broadcom has released a driver of their own (bcm5700) which works with kernel 2.4.21. When I try that combination it works fine, however, the bcm5700 driver wont work at all on recent 2.4 or 2.6 kernels.

Does anyone know what is wrong with the tg3 driver? Has anyone tried using it on a 5901 card with success?

Regards,
David

relevant part of dmesg with 2.4.21 + bcm5700
--------------------------------------------
Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet Driver bcm5700 with Broadcom NIC Extension (NICE) ver. 6.2.17 (07/14/03)
eth0: Broadcom BCM5901 100Base-TX found at mem d0200000, IRQ 11, node addr 00061bc20348
eth0: Broadcom BCM5705 Integrated Copper transceiver found
eth0: Scatter-gather ON, 64-bit DMA ON, Tx Checksum ON, Rx Checksum ON, 802.1Q VLAN ON, NAPI ON

lspci -vvv with 2.4.21 + bcm5700
--------------------------------
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device 170d (rev 01)
Subsystem: IBM: Unknown device 0545
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66Mhz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64 (16000ns min), cache line size 08
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: Memory at d0200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=1 PME-
Capabilities: [50] Vital Product Data
Capabilities: [58] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+ Queue=0/3 Enable-
Address: 020108086c0e6458 Data: 4002

ifconfig with 2.4.21 + bcm5700
------------------------------
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:06:1B:C2:03:48
inet addr:192.168.0.2 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:627 (627.0 b) TX bytes:1090 (1.0 KiB)
Interrupt:11 Memory:d0200000-d0210000

dmesg on 2.6.0-test5 + tg3
--------------------------
tg3.c:v2.2 (August 24, 2003) eth0: Tigon3 [partno(BCM95901A50) rev 3001 PHY(5705)] (PCI:33MHz:32-bit) 10/100BaseT Ethernet 00:06:1b:c2:03:48

lspci -vvv on 2.6.0-test5 + tg3
-------------------------------
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device 170d (rev 01) Subsystem: IBM: Unknown device 0545
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66Mhz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <T Abort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64 (16000ns min), cache line size 08
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: Memory at d0200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=1 PME-
Capabilities: [50] Vital Product Data
Capabilities: [58] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+ Queue=0/3 Enable-
Address: 020108086c0e6458 Data: 4002

ifconfig on 2.6.0-test5 + tg3
-----------------------------
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:06:1B:C2:03:48
inet addr:192.168.0.2 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::206:1bff:fec2:348/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:11

Trying unplugging/plugging the cable, or ifdown+ifup cycle, and let me know if that fixes things.

Jeff

Hi,

I tried unplugging/plugging the cable a few times along with ifup and ifdown a few times in different variations. It didnt seem to do much, one interesting thing that I noticed was that the Windows XP host that this laptop was connected to with a crossover cable during the testing reported the link as being down when the NIC was ifup'ed and vice versa.

After being bored with ifup/down and cable pulling I tried some modprobe/rmmod as well. This proptly hosed the system, the "ifconfig eth0 down" command is frozen, unkillable and consumes 100% CPU right now. ifconfig on another console to check if the card "is still there" also froze. Well, at least the network led woke up, its on constantly right now :-)

Ideas?

//David

PS
With the tg3 driver the card is reported as a 33Mhz PCI card, with the bcm5700 it's reported as a 66Mhz PCI card, could this make a difference?

Hi,

an update from the time I posted the previous message:

1) Broadcom has since released a 7.0.0 version of their driver, it works just fine with the latest 2.6 kernels (tried it on 2.6.0-test6 and using it right now on 2.6.0-test6-mm4).

2) The in-kernel tg3 driver still doesn't work with the Broadcom 5901 NIC (tried with 2.6.0-test6 and 2.6.0-test6-mm4). Same symptoms as previously (card is found and appears as eth0, but no traffic is sent/recieved by the card).

3) I've asked around on a few lists (debian-user, debian-laptop-user and linux-thinkpad) but been unable to find any G40 owner that has tried the tg3 driver with their NIC. It seems that all of them are using the bcm5700 driver which would explain the lack of other bug reports. Are there any G40 owners on this list who would be willing to test if the tg3 driver in the latest kernels work with their NIC's?

Kind regards,
David