DE(4)

💖 DE(4) — the DEC DC21x4x Ethernet device driver 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this is the manual page for de, the DEC DC21x4x Ethernet device driver — and yes she lives in the Kernel Interfaces Manual, section 4, that's the vibe 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so like, if you wanna compile this driver into the kernel, you drop this line into your kernel configuration file:

device de

or, alternatively, if you'd rather load the driver as a module at boot time, you put this in loader.conf(5):

if_de_load="YES"

either way, slay 💅

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🚨 DEPRECATION NOTICE 🚨

bestie. listen. the de driver is not present in FreeBSD 13.0 and later. she's gone, she graduated, she left the group chat 😭 if you want the lore, check out https://github.com/freebsd/fcp/blob/master/fcp-0101.md for more information.

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

the de driver provides support for the Ethernet adapters based on the Digital Equipment DC21x4x based self-contained Ethernet and Fast Ethernet chips. iconic honestly 👑

the de driver supports the following media types:

• autoselect — turns on autoselection of the media type and options ✨
• 10baseT/UTP — sets 10Mbps operation on the 10baseT port
• 10base2/BNC — sets 10Mbps operation on the BNC port
• 10base5/AUI — sets 10Mbps operation on the AUI port
• 100baseTX — sets 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation 🔥
• 100baseFX — sets 100Mbps operation
• 100baseT4 — sets 100Mbps operation (4-pair cat-3 cable)

and the de driver also supports the following media options:

• full-duplex — sets full duplex operation 💫

heads up tho — the media types available depend on the particular card in use. some cards are explicitly programmed to a particular media type by a setup utility and are not changeable. periodt. no takebacks 🙈

use the ifconfig(8) command — and in particular the -m flag — to list the supported media types for your particular card. iykyk 💜

and no, the old ifconfig linkN method of configuration is not supported. she's retired, we don't do that anymore 🎀

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🖥️ HARDWARE 🖥️

adapters supported by the de driver include:

• Adaptec ANA-6944/TX
• Cogent EM100FX and EM440TX
• Corega FastEther PCI-TX
• D-Link DFE-500TX
• DEC DE435, DEC DE450, and DEC DE500
• ELECOM LD-PCI2T, LD-PCITS
• I-O DATA LA2/T-PCI
• SMC Etherpower 8432, 9332 and 9334
• ZNYX ZX3xx

look at that lineup. a whole roster. main character energy from every single one 🌈

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🩺 DIAGNOSTICS 🩺

• de%d: waking device from sleep/snooze mode — the 21041 and 21140A chips support suspending the operation of the card. she was napping, now she's up 💤
• de%d: error: desired IRQ of %d does not match device's actual IRQ of %d — the device probe detected that the board is configured for a different interrupt than the one specified in the kernel configuration file. mismatch, not it 😭
• de%d: not configured; limit of %d reached or exceeded — there is a limit of 32 de devices allowed in a single machine. 33 is simply too many bestie
• de%d: not configured; 21040 pass 2.0 required (%d.%d found) — certain revisions of the chipset are not supported by this driver. same energy as:
• de%d: not configured; 21140 pass 1.1 required (%d.%d found) — certain revisions of the chipset are not supported by this driver.

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

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

go read those too, they're all in the same friend group fr fr 🫶

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💖 AUTHORS 💖

the de device driver was written by Matt Thomas. this manual page was written by David E. O'Brien.

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and that's the whole page babes!! shoutout to Debian and the date October 24, 2018, which is when this DE(4) page was born ⭐ stay iconic, protect your IRQs, and remember: de isn't in FreeBSD 13.0 and later, so admire her from a distance 🌸💅✨