NAME

     vx — 3Com EtherLink III / Fast EtherLink III (3c59x) Ethernet driver

SYNOPSIS

     To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your kernel
     configuration file:

           device vx

     Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in
     loader.conf(5):

           if_vx_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

     The vx driver provides support for the 3Com “Vortex” chipset.

     The medium selection can be influenced by the following link flags to the ifconfig(8)
     command:

     link0   Use the AUI port.
     link1   Use the BNC port.
     link2   Use the UTP port.

HARDWARE

     The vx driver supports the following cards:

     •   3Com 3c590 EtherLink III PCI
     •   3Com 3c592 EtherLink III EISA
     •   3Com 3c595 Fast EtherLink III PCI in 10 Mbps mode
     •   3Com 3c597 Fast EtherLink III EISA in 10 Mbps mode

DIAGNOSTICS

     vx%d: not configured; kernel is built for only %d devices.  There are not enough devices in
     the kernel configuration file for the number of adapters present in the system.  Add devices
     to the configuration file, rebuild the kernel, and reboot.

     All other diagnostics indicate either a hardware problem or a bug in the driver.

SEE ALSO

     arp(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), ifconfig(8)

HISTORY

     The vx device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 2.1.  It was derived from the ep driver, from
     which it inherits most of its limitations.

AUTHORS

     The vx device driver and this manual page were written by Fred Gray <fgray@rice.edu>, based
     on the work of Herb Peyerl and with the assistance of numerous others.

CAVEATS

     Some early-revision 3c590 cards are defective and suffer from many receive overruns, which
     cause lost packets.  The author has attempted to implement a test for it based on the
     information supplied by 3Com, but the test resulted mostly in spurious warnings.

     The performance of this driver is somewhat limited by the fact that it uses only polled-mode
     I/O and does not make use of the bus-mastering capability of the cards.

BUGS

     The vx driver is known not to reset the adapter correctly following a warm boot on some
     systems.

     The vx driver has not been exhaustively tested with all the models of cards that it claims
     to support.