Subject: Re: odd RTL8139 quirk.

From: Andrew Morton <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:32:40 -0700

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:04:06 -0400
Jeff Garzik <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Dave Jones wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 03:37:41PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >  > Dave Jones wrote:
> >  > > I've just been playing with a model 2 OQO, which has an RTL8139.
> >  > > It gets detected just fine, though it doesn't actually work..
> >  > > 
> >  > > eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xf8830000, 00:00:00:00:00:00, IRQ 18
> >  > > eth0:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139'
> >  > > 
> >  > > The null MAC address being one clue.  Another oddity is that
> >  > > ethtool reports that there's no link detected, even though there is.
> >  > > (Enough for it to PXE boot a kernel from at least :)
> >  > > 
> >  > > Futzing with the debug= modparam didn't yield anything extra at all.
> >  > > 
> >  > > Any clues?
> >  > 
> >  > Sounds like a broken EEPROM.  Does supplying a MAC via ifconfig prior to 
> >  > 'ifconfig ... up' help?
> > 
> > Ah. This sounds enlightening: http://www.oqotalk.com/index.php/topic,1511.0.html
> > Seems a shame to have to choose PIO vs MMIO for a distro kernel though.
> > Would there be any objection to turning that into a modparam ?
> > (If we wanted to get really fancy, we could even quirk around it automatically
> >  when we detect broken hardware).
> 
> Something like this?  :)
> 
> http://www.linux.sgi.com/archives/netdev/2004-11/msg00226.html
> 
> It did not go upstream but it needed some init-time bug fixing, IIRC. 
> Maybe akpm remembers more why my patch sucked... :)

Apart from its From: address you mean? ;)

I can find no record, sorry.