BCM4401 Support for FreeBSD

[Terry Lambert]

Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-07-28 at 12:18, Aeefyu wrote:
> > i.e. Broadcom 440x NIC support for FreeBSD 4.x and 5.x (as found on
> > latest Dell's Notebooks - mine is a 8500)
> >
> > Would anyone  be so kind to enlighten me on the the current status?
> > Last I heard of developments being made was end of June.
> 
> This was forwarded to me from Greg Lehey.  The dcm driver works okay for
> me, but I had to hack it for some new bus dma changes.  I have noticed a
> few issues of slowness with it when using it in a more "normal" sense
> (i.e. using it to read mail, ssh to machines, etc.).


Most likely, the interactive performance is a result of the RX
packet coelescing, with a timer set to too long an interval.  In
general, it's probably an easy adjustment to make.

I notice that he also says he didn't know what to add into some
of the timer and media routines, so that could be part of the
issue as well (e.g. if it's getting wedged and having to unwedge
itself).

BTW: As a rule of thumb, if you don't know what to put in a timer
or media routine, put a printf() there.  It will likely annoy
someone into fixing it.  8-).

-- Terry