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

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.  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.

     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 the le driver does not support selecting 100Mbps (Fast
     Ethernet) media types.

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), 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 13.1-RELEASE-p6        December 26, 2020       FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6