DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / freebsd-manpages / if_wb.4freebsd.en
WB(4) Device Drivers Manual WB(4)

wb — Winbond W89C840F Fast Ethernet device driver

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

device miibus
device wb

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

if_wb_load="YES"

The wb driver is not present in FreeBSD 13.0 and later. See https://github.com/freebsd/fcp/blob/master/fcp-0101.md for more information.

The wb driver provides support for PCI Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers based on the Winbond W89C840F Fast Ethernet controller chip. The 840F should not be confused with the 940F, which is an NE2000 clone and only supports 10Mbps speeds.

The Winbond controller uses bus master DMA and is designed to be a DEC 'tulip' workalike. It differs from the standard DEC design in several ways: the control and status registers are spaced 4 bytes apart instead of 8, and the receive filter is programmed through registers rather than by downloading a special setup frame via the transmit DMA engine. Using an external PHY, the Winbond chip supports both 10 and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex.

The wb driver supports the following media types:

autoselect
Enable autoselection of the media type and options. This is only supported if the PHY chip attached to the Winbond controller supports NWAY autonegotiation. The user can manually override the autoselected mode by adding media options to the /etc/rc.conf file.
10baseT/UTP
Set 10Mbps operation. The mediaopt option can also be used to select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes.
100baseTX
Set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation. The mediaopt option can also be used to select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes.

The wb driver supports the following media options:

full-duplex
Force full duplex operation.
half-duplex
Force half duplex operation.

Note that the 100baseTX media type is only available if supported by the adapter. For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

The wb driver supports Winbond W89C840F based Fast Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers including:

  • Trendware TE100-PCIE

wb%d: couldn't map memory
A fatal initialization error has occurred.
wb%d: couldn't map interrupt
A fatal initialization error has occurred.
wb%d: watchdog timeout
The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with the network connection (cable).
wb%d: no memory for rx list
The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring.
wb%d: no memory for tx list
The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring when allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf chain into a cluster.
wb%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0
This message applies only to adapters which support power management. Some operating systems place the controller in low power mode when shutting down, and some PCI BIOSes fail to bring the chip out of this state before configuring it. The controller loses all of its PCI configuration in the D3 state, so if the BIOS does not set it back to full power mode in time, it will not be able to configure it correctly. The driver tries to detect this condition and bring the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state, but this may not be enough to return the driver to a fully operational condition. If you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to attach the device as a network interface, you will have to perform second warm boot to have the device properly configured.

Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another operating system. If you power down your system prior to booting FreeBSD, the card should be configured correctly.

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

The wb device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.

The wb driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu>.

The Winbond chip seems to behave strangely in some cases when the link partner switches modes. If for example both sides are set to 10Mbps half-duplex, and the other end is changed to 100Mbps full-duplex, the Winbond's receiver suddenly starts writing trash all over the RX descriptors. The wb driver handles this by forcing a reset of both the controller chip and attached PHY. This is drastic, but it appears to be the only way to recover properly from this condition.

October 24, 2018 Debian