gem(4) ERI/GEM/GMAC Ethernet device driver

SYNOPSIS

To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:
device miibus device gem

Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf5:


if_gem_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The driver provides support for the GMAC Ethernet hardware found mostly in the last Apple PowerBooks G3s and most G4-based Apple hardware, as well as Sun UltraSPARC machines.

All controllers supported by the driver have TCP checksum offload capability for both receive and transmit, support for the reception and transmission of extended frames for vlan(4) and a 512-bit multicast hash filter.

HARDWARE

Chips supported by the driver include:

  • Apple GMAC
  • Sun ERI 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
  • Sun GEM Gigabit Ethernet

The following add-on cards are known to work with the driver at this time:

  • Sun Gigabit Ethernet PCI 2.0/3.0 (GBE/P) (part no. 501-4373)
  • Sun Gigabit Ethernet SBus 2.0/3.0 (GBE/S) (part no. 501-4375)

NOTES

On sparc64 the driver respects the local-mac-address? system configuration variable which can be set in the Open Firmware boot monitor using the setenv command or by eeprom(8). If set to ``false '' (the default), the driver will use the system's default MAC address for all of its devices. If set to ``true '' the unique MAC address of each interface is used if present rather than the system's default MAC address.

Supported interfaces having their own MAC address include the on-board Sun ERI 10/100 Mbps on boards equipped with more than one Ethernet interface and the Sun Gigabit Ethernet 2.0/3.0 GBE add-on cards.

HISTORY

The device driver appeared in Nx 1.6 . The first Fx version to include it was Fx 5.0 .

AUTHORS

An -nosplit The driver was written for Nx by An Eduardo Horvath Aq [email protected] . It was ported to Fx by An Thomas Moestl Aq [email protected] and later on improved by An Marius Strobl Aq [email protected] . The man page was written by An Thomas Klausner Aq [email protected] .