# Stuck on 10BT

## MaD-DaRiUs

Hi everyone,

hoping you can help me with a little problem.

i'm using a 3Com 3c905b ethernet card and its stuck on 10BaseT mode and i can't change it, i've looked everywhere and i can't find anything that will help or i'am just too blind to see it.

and it's only in gentoo that i have this problem.

i've used FreeBSD, Lycoris, redhat, mandrake and none of them had this problem, and it's been like this everytime i've installed gentoo also.

please help, it very annoying transfering 1 gig files at 10 Mb/s as compared to 100 Mb/s (30 minutes or 3!)

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## pjp

ifconfig has a 'media type' option, though I've never used it. *Quote:*   

> media type
> 
>               Set the physical port or medium type to be used  by
> 
>               the  device.   Not all devices can change this set-
> ...

 

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## MaD-DaRiUs

thats true but it only goes upto 10BT

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## rac

See /usr/src/linux/Documentation/networking/vortex.txt.  Compile it as a module, and pass "options=0x204" when the module is loaded.

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## MaD-DaRiUs

well i don't think that worked, its still on 10bt but then again i'am terrible with modules, no luck at all with them, in fact just compiling 3c59x as a module stopped emu10k1 from loading for some reason. so if you wouldn't mind a step by step for n00bs guide   :Wink:   it would be much appreciated

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## pjp

 *MaD-DaRiUs wrote:*   

> thats true but it only goes upto 10BT

 I assumed more than 10BT would setable and the example didn't list everything.

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## Kihaji

Can your hub/router  do 100BT? If I remember correctly 3coms are auto-sensing and will do the highest speed they can.

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## pilla

I would suggest to go to 3 COM website and get the utility floppies there for you 3com. Then, boot with it and you can properly configure and test it.

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## MaD-DaRiUs

 *Quote:*   

> Can your hub/router do 100BT? If I remember correctly 3coms are auto-sensing and will do the highest speed they can.
> 
> 

 

as i said earlyer it goes to 100BT in everything but gentoo.

 *Quote:*   

> I would suggest to go to 3 COM website and get the utility floppies there for you 3com. Then, boot with it and you can properly configure and test it.

 

that would be a great idea if it were possible to find anything on 3coms website   :Wink: 

i've tried looking around on there site with no luck.

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## MaD-DaRiUs

YES!!!   :Very Happy: 

i have found the solution, when i was stumbling around on google search looking for some help with the 3c90x drivers i found of 3coms site i found out about the nifty tool called mii-tool, i just did

```
mii-tool -A 100baseTx eth0
```

and my problem was fixed!!   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy: 

thank you all for the help!

very much appreciated, gentoo tech support is the best!   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy: 

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## MaD-DaRiUs

BLARGH.

nevermind that it only worked once, now whenever i do it the link light just flashes rapidly and i lose network connectivity  :Sad: 

Rac,

about your post earlyer when i put a line like this

```
options 3c59x options=0x204
```

into a file called 3c59x into my /etc/modules.d/ folder it doesn't work

what am i doing wrong?

 :Sad: 

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## rac

<flamebait>Get a cheap realtek and save yourself a lot of hassle</flamebait>

 *MaD-DaRiUs wrote:*   

> Rac,
> 
> about your post earlyer when i put a line like this
> 
> ```
> ...

 

Are you sure it's compiled as a module and not into the kernel proper?  You might also want to try switching cables.

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## MaD-DaRiUs

yes yes i'am sure its a module, and no its not the cable it works fine in windows, and i have a bunch of old realtek cards lying around but this is a 3Com that cost my bro $80 some years ago and its worked faithfully until gentoo.

one thing im wondering though, is that the mii-tool worked once and got it to 100baseTx-FD but now it won't, maybe it needs another computer to negotiate with? i don't know im just running out of idea's here.

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## rac

Which kernel sources are you using?  If the answer is "gentoo", could I persuade you to try the vanilla sources to see if that improves anything?

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## MaD-DaRiUs

well yes the answer is gentoo, so i guess i'll try the vanilla sources, one thing i forgot to mention is, whenever i set it to 100baseTx-FD with the modules thing or mii-tool the link light flashes very rapidly and will keep doing that until i set it to 10baseT-HD

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## MaD-DaRiUs

Well i tried the vanilla sources and that didn't work, so i went to 3com's site and dug around for a while, found a piece of software called EtherCD which comes in two parts 1 is a load of drivers for all the windows version, 2 is a few drivers plus a configuration utility so i wrote the second part to a floppy and booted of a win boot disk(won't run in winxp of linux), and ran the util set it to 100baseTx-FD and when i reboot it still had the same problem. so i went back set EVERYTHING to auto and set it to "Best network performance" and reboot and it WORKED!! woohooooooo!!

so now i smack myself on the forhead(need an emote for that).

and bow down to Bloody Bastard  :Wink: 

thanks a lot rac for all the help  :Very Happy: 

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## pilla

Those are the tools that I meant  :Cool: 

 *MaD-DaRiUs wrote:*   

> Well i tried the vanilla sources and that didn't work, so i went to 3com's site and dug around for a while, found a piece of software called EtherCD which comes in two parts 1 is a load of drivers for all the windows version, 2 is a few drivers plus a configuration utility so i wrote the second part to a floppy and booted of a win boot disk(won't run in winxp of linux), and ran the util set it to 100baseTx-FD and when i reboot it still had the same problem. so i went back set EVERYTHING to auto and set it to "Best network performance" and reboot and it WORKED!! woohooooooo!!
> 
> so now i smack myself on the forhead(need an emote for that).
> 
> and bow down to Bloody Bastard 
> ...

 

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## meyer37

I just want to added to this post that I was experiencing the same problems with a 3c905c card.  

The fix:

1) Loaded as a module 

       (M) 3C59x in kernel

2) Append to the 3c59x in modules.autoload options=0x204

***note I also added debug=2 to the modules.autoload inorder to check the status of the card in my logs.

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