SN(4)

📦 version 11.0, in nixpkgs unstable

💖 hey bestie, welcome to SN(4) 💖

okay so this is the SN(4) page from the Kernel Interfaces Manual, section 4 — and it's literally all about the sn driver, the National Semiconductor DP83932 (SONIC) based Ethernet device driver. strap in, it's giving vintage networking realness 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

sn — National Semiconductor DP83932 (SONIC) based Ethernet device driver 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

arc
       sn0 at jazzio?

mac68k
       sn* at obio?
       sn* at nubus?

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

The sn interface gives you access to a 10 Mb/s Ethernet network via the National Semiconductor DP83932 (SONIC) Ethernet chip set. no cap, that's the whole vibe 🌈

Each of the host's network addresses is specified at boot time with an SIOCSIFADDR ioctl(2). The sn interface employs the address resolution protocol described in arp(4) to dynamically map between Internet and Ethernet addresses on the local network. bestie, that's the magic ✨

🔥 HARDWARE 🔥

🌸 arc

The sn driver supports on-board JAZZ based SONIC interfaces found on Acer PICA and NEC machines. iconic little arc moment 💜

🦋 mac68k

The sn driver is currently known to support the following NuBus cards:

  • Apple LC Twisted-pair (part #820-0532-A) PDS card
  • Cayman Gatorcard PDS
  • Dayna DaynaPort/E30

In addition, the sn interface supports the following interfaces:

  • on-board Ethernet for non-AV Quadras
  • on-board Ethernet for 500-series PowerBooks
  • Apple CS Ethernet Twisted-pair card for Comm Slot found on LC575, Quadra 630, LC630, and Performa 580.

🩺 DIAGNOSTICS 🩺

sn%d: transmit FIFO underrun
sn%d: receive FIFO overrun
sn%d: receive buffer exceeded
sn%d: receive buffers exhausted
sn%d: receive descriptors exhausted

These messages indicate that the interface gets errors (due to heavy load etc.) and reinitialized. so if you see these, it's lowkey stressed 😭

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

arp(4), inet(4), netintro(4), ifconfig(8) — go read these too, iykyk 🫶

🎀 HISTORY 🎀

The sn interface for mac68k, which was derived from a driver for old NetBSD/pica port, first appeared in NetBSD 1.3. very retro of her 💅

Jason Thorpe has rewritten a new machine independent SONIC driver which uses bus_dma(9) and bus_space(9) APIs after NetBSD 1.5 release, and NetBSD/arc has been switched to using the machine independent (MI) driver. slay, Jason 🔥

NetBSD/mac68k has also been switched to using the MI driver after the NetBSD 4.0 release. periodt 💖

bestie, this little page was served up by Debian, dated May 16, 2009 — mwah, kisses from the manpage archives 💋🎀

📦 where this page comes from