NAME

       le — AMD Am7900 LANCE and Am79C9xx ILACC/PCnet Ethernet interface driver

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"

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.  This includes a superset of the PCI bus Ethernet chips
       supported by the pcn(4) driver.  The le driver treats all of these PCI  bus  Ethernet  chips  as  an  AMD
       Am79C970  PCnet-PCI  and  does not support the additional features like the MII bus and burst mode of AMD
       Am79C971 PCnet-FAST and greater chips.  Thus the pcn(4) driver should be preferred for the latter.

       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 provided 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 unlike the pcn(4) driver, the le driver does not  support  selecting  100Mbps  (Fast  Ethernet)
       media types.

   sparc64
       The le driver supports the on-board LANCE interfaces found in Sun Ultra 1 machines.  The le driver allows
       the selection of the following media types via ifconfig(8) with these on-board interfaces:

       autoselect   Enable autoselection of the media type.

       10baseT/UTP  Select UTP media.

       10base5/AUI  Select AUI media.

       When  using  autoselection,  a default media type is selected for use by examining all ports for carrier.
       The first media type with which a carrier is detected will be  selected.   Additionally,  if  carrier  is
       dropped on a port, the driver will switch between the possible ports until one with carrier is found.

       The le driver also supports the following Sun SBus Ethernet add-on adapters:

       •   SCSI HBA and Buffered Ethernet (SBE/S, P/N 501-1869)
       •   Fast SCSI and Buffered Ethernet (FSBE/S, P/N 501-2015 and 501-2981)

       The  le  driver  does  not  support  the  selection  of media types and options via ifconfig(8) with SBus
       Ethernet add-on adapters.

       For further information on configuring media types and options, see ifconfig(8).

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 receive 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 driver 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 failure.

       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), pcn(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>.

Debian                                          February 15, 2017                                          LE(4)