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Fried the onboard Broadcom 4401 network...

DISCUSSION Tomas Ogren 5 participants 8 messages Jan 25, 2004 – Jan 26, 2004

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#0 lore raw

Hello.

I'm not exactly sure what caused this or if it's reproducable, but here's my story anyway.

I have an ASUS A7V8X with onboard Broadcom 4401 (Rev 01) 10/100 and I've been running 2.4.x (2.4.21) for a long time now with Broadcoms bcm4400 driver (v2.0.2) which has worked just fine. Now I decided to try 2.6 and installed 2.6.2-rc1-bk2 with the b44 driver that comes with the kernel. While doing some tests I noticed that I got really crappy performance (3-4MB/s) while sending, but full throughput (~11MB/s) while receiving.

So I figured that it could be the shipped driver.. Downloaded bcm4400 v3.0.7 which has 2.6 support and installed it. Didn't make stuff go faster. So I thought I'd boot into 2.4.25pre6 and see how it behaves under a 2.4 kernel with the latest bcm4400 driver. The 2.4.25pre6 I had compiled includes the b44 driver. I booted it up and then I got a bunch of the following:
"eth0: b44: BUG! Timeout waiting for bit 80000000 of register 428 to clear."
followed by:
"eth0: Link is down."

After that, I have not been able to get link (neither see it through Linux/WinXP or the physical LED). I have tried multiple cables and my laptop is perfectly happy with all of them, but the broadcom thingie seems not. The switch doesn't see link either.

The actual chip seems to be alive, it responds to PCI stuff... it can be initialized and all but I can't get link.

Not sure what you can do with this information, but I can probably not do anything more with this NIC at least..

CC me for any replies, please.

/Tomas

Signature · 3 lines
Tomas Ögren, [email protected], http://www.ing.umu.se/~stric/
|- Student at Computing Science, University of Umeå
`- Sysadmin at {cs,ing,acc}.umu.se
#1 lore raw
Quoted 4 lines · Tomas Ogren

Not sure what you can do with this information, but I can probably not do anything more with this NIC at least..

Just a thought, but did you try reseting the switch, or trying another port on the switch?

Also, you don't seem to have gone back to a last known good configuration (unless WinXP covers this?)

Andrew Walrond

#2 lore raw

On 25 January, 2004 - Andrew Walrond sent me these 0,4K bytes:

Quoted 7 lines · Tomas Ogren
Quoted 4 lines

Not sure what you can do with this information, but I can probably not do anything more with this NIC at least..

Just a thought, but did you try reseting the switch, or trying another port on the switch?

I have, no dice.

Quoted 2 lines

Also, you don't seem to have gone back to a last known good configuration (unless WinXP covers this?)

I have, no dice.

It used to light up the link led while in BIOS etc.. it doesn't anymore..

/Tomas

Signature · 3 lines
Tomas Ögren, [email protected], http://www.ing.umu.se/~stric/
|- Student at Computing Science, University of Umeå
`- Sysadmin at {cs,ing,acc}.umu.se
#3 lore raw
In reply to Tomas Ogren

Hi!

Quoted 4 lines

After that, I have not been able to get link (neither see it through Linux/WinXP or the physical LED). I have tried multiple cables and my laptop is perfectly happy with all of them, but the broadcom thingie seems not. The switch doesn't see link either.

Try to physically unplug machine from AC for a while.
Pavel

Signature · 2 lines
When do you have a heart between your knees?
[Johanka's followup: and *two* hearts?]
#4 lore raw

On 26 January, 2004 - Pavel Machek sent me these 0,4K bytes:

Quoted 8 lines

Hi!

Quoted 4 lines

After that, I have not been able to get link (neither see it through Linux/WinXP or the physical LED). I have tried multiple cables and my laptop is perfectly happy with all of them, but the broadcom thingie seems not. The switch doesn't see link either.

Try to physically unplug machine from AC for a while.

Ah, thank you! Just turning the power switch off didn't help.. I suppose it's kept alive (for some values of alive ;) for WOL and such..

Now it's working again.

/Tomas

Signature · 3 lines
Tomas Ögren, [email protected], http://www.ing.umu.se/~stric/
|- Student at Computing Science, University of Umeå
`- Sysadmin at {cs,ing,acc}.umu.se
#5 lore raw
Quoted 9 lines · Tomas Ogren

On 26 January, 2004 - Pavel Machek sent me these 0,4K bytes:

Quoted 7 lines

Hi!

Quoted 4 lines

After that, I have not been able to get link (neither see it through Linux/WinXP or the physical LED). I have tried multiple cables and my laptop is perfectly happy with all of them, but the broadcom thingie seems not. The switch doesn't see link either.

Quoted 4 lines
Quoted 1 line

Try to physically unplug machine from AC for a while.

Ah, thank you! Just turning the power switch off didn't help.. I suppose it's kept alive (for some values of alive ;) for WOL and such..

I think you meant undead in your case. ;)

Quoted 1 line

Now it's working again.

Signature · 2 lines
Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs, SuSE CR
#6 lore raw
In reply to Tomas Ogren
Quoted 10 lines · Tomas Ogren

On 26 January, 2004 - Pavel Machek sent me these 0,4K bytes:

Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 4 lines

After that, I have not been able to get link (neither see it through Linux/WinXP or the physical LED). I have tried multiple cables and my laptop is perfectly happy with all of them, but the broadcom thingie seems not. The switch doesn't see link either.

Try to physically unplug machine from AC for a while.

Ah, thank you! Just turning the power switch off didn't help.. I suppose it's kept alive (for some values of alive ;) for WOL and such..

I was startled when I bought a power meter to find that my computers and even some monitors consume power when switched off. I don't mean "soft" off - even with the mechanical switch in the off position they still consume significant power.

My AMD box consumes about 15W of power when the mechanical switch on its power supply is off. About 35W when the mechanical switch is on but the computer is in the "soft off" state (i.e. what you get when you ask it to turn itself off).

-- Jamie

#7 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines · Jamie Lokier

I was startled when I bought a power meter to find that my computers and even some monitors consume power when switched off. I don't mean "soft" off - even with the mechanical switch in the off position they still consume significant power.

My AMD box consumes about 15W of power when the mechanical switch on its power supply is off. About 35W when the mechanical switch is on but the computer is in the "soft off" state (i.e. what you get when you ask it to turn itself off).

I've got some dual xeon machines where the psu's get too hot to touch when switched _off_! Thankfully they run cool when switched on (and the fan is running) I've always assumed some sort of fault, but maybe not...

Andrew Walrond