The dl2k driver is not maintained anymore (I've tried to contact the
Edward Peng, but have never heard back anything). At least with the
DGE-550SX card, it doesn't work with modern hardware because under
load, the card seems to see different queue contents than the host.
It worked fine in older hosts (but we only stressed receive back than,
not transmit). We also went back way early in the 2.6 series to get
matching kernel versions, and the driver still did not work in the new
box, so it's not just bitrot ("new" is relative, our debugging
attempts happened in 2006).
I guess the lack of synchronization in the code might explain this,
but I don't know how to fix it. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable
could have a look at the driver?
The FreeBSD folks have specs for the underlying chip (a Tamarack
TC9021), I believe.
If the driver can't be made to work reliably, I think it should be
removed or marked accordingly, so that users don't waste time trying
to get it running. (We've got a few of those cards lying around
because some developers bumped the version number and adjusted dates,
while they actually fixed only comment typos and stuff. We asummed
that it was still supported. 8-/)
--
Florian Weimer <fweimer at bfk.de>
BFK edv-consulting GmbH http://www.bfk.de/
Kriegsstra?e 100 tel: +49-721-96201-1
D-76133 Karlsruhe fax: +49-721-96201-99
