Broadcom BCM5901 NIC

Broadcom BCM5901 NIC

[David Härdeman]

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

Re: Broadcom BCM5901 NIC

[Jeff Garzik]

David Härdeman wrote:
> 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?


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

	Jeff

Re: Broadcom BCM5901 NIC

[David Härdeman]

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?

On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 07:28:02PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>David Härdeman wrote:
>>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?
>
>
>Trying unplugging/plugging the cable, or ifdown+ifup cycle, and let me 
>know if that fixes things.
>
>	Jeff
>
>

Re: Broadcom BCM5901 NIC

[David Härdeman]

Jeff Garzik wrote:

> David Härdeman wrote:
>
>> 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?
>
> Trying unplugging/plugging the cable, or ifdown+ifup cycle, and let me 
> know if that fixes things.
>
>     Jeff
>
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

Re: Broadcom BCM5901 NIC

[David Härdeman]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2003 at 03:00:41AM +0200, Xose Vazquez Perez wrote:
>Did your NIC pass the broadcom tests ?
>http://www.broadcom.com/docs/driver_download/570x/B57udiag-6.18.zip
>

Yes, and it also works just fine when I use it at work on a daily basis 
with the 2.4.21 kernel (+ broadcoms own bcm5700 driver) or Windows XP 
(also with broadcoms own driver).

//David