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LE(4)		       FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual			 LE(4)

NAME
     le	-- AMD Am7900 LANCE and	Am79C9xx 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"

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) chip set.

     The le driver also	supports PCnet adapters	based on the AMD 79C9xx	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 chip sets sup-
     ported by the pcn(4) driver.  The le driver treats	all of these PCI bus
     Ethernet chip sets	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 chip sets.	Thus the pcn(4)	driver should be pre-
     ferred for	the latter.

     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
   PCI
     The PCI bus Ethernet chip sets supported by the le	driver are:

     +o	 AMD Am53C974/Am79C970/Am79C974	PCnet-PCI
     +o	 AMD Am79C970A PCnet-PCI II
     +o	 AMD Am79C971 PCnet-FAST
     +o	 AMD Am79C972 PCnet-FAST+
     +o	 AMD Am79C973/Am79C975 PCnet-FAST III
     +o	 AMD Am79C976 PCnet-PRO
     +o	 AMD Am79C978 PCnet-Home

     The le driver supports the	following media	types with these chip sets:

     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 following media types are available	with these:

     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 car-
     rier 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.

     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	Ether-
     net 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 fail-
     ure.

     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
     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>.

FreeBSD	11.1		       January 30, 2006			  FreeBSD 11.1

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | HARDWARE | DIAGNOSTICS | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS

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