change speed of lan card

[TMcB]

Hi

I have an alphaserver 1000 a runninf VMS8.2.
the comms guys have tole me that it needs to be configured as 10-half.

When I look at the details currently configured it shows :
LAN Configuration:
Device Parent Medium/User Version Speed Duplex Size MAC Address Current Address Type
------ ------ ----------- ------- ----- ------ ---- ----------------- ----------------- ----
EWA0 CSMA/CD X-111 10 Full 1500 00-00-F8-22-80-EF AA-00-04-00-1E-04 DE435

Can anyone advise how to change it to 10-half.

I tried useing :
mc lancp set dev ewa0 /speed=10 /nofull

but "show conf" still shows it as 10 full.

Your help is greatly appreciated

[Steven Schweda]

And what does "lancp show devi /char EWA0"
say?

[Hein van den Heuvel]

>> I have an alphaserver 1000 a runninf VMS8.2.
the comms guys have tole me that it needs to be configured as 10-half

Did they say why?
Who owns the box and application?
Who runs the show here? 'The comms guys'?

Insist on them supporting 100-full.

Anything less risks giving the alpha/OpenVMS a bad name.

Only half joking....

Best regards,
Hein.

[TMcB]

Hi
show dev/char -

Device Characteristics EWA0:
Value Characteristic
----- --------------
1500 Device buffer size
Normal Controller mode
External Internal loopback mode
00-00-F8-22-80-EF Hardware LAN address
Multicast address list
CSMA/CD Communication medium
FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF Current LAN address
128 Minimum receive buffers
256 Maximum receive buffers
No Full duplex enable
No Full duplex operational
AA-00-04-00-1E-04 Current LAN address
TwistedPair Line media type
10 Line speed (mbps)
Enabled Auto-negotiation
Disabled Flow control
Disabled Jumbo frames
Disabled/No Failset Logical LAN state
0 Failover priority

[TMcB]

Hello Hein

thanks for replying.
spoke to the comms team - they have no problem setting the switch to 100 Full.

How can I confirm that the card is capable of being 100 Full?
Also, is is better setting it to 100 Full or Auto?

thanks

[Andy Bustamante]

The DE-435 is will only support 10 mb. You can set it:

MC LANCP
lancp> SET DEV EWA0/speed=10/full
lancp> DEFINE DEV EWA0/speed=10/full

Depending on what you're doing with the network it may be worth a few dollars to put in a de-500 for 100mb connectivity.

This assumes that you're running the card on the rj-45 connection. If I recall, the de-435 also supports a BNC cable, that connection does need to be set to 10mb half duplex.

Andy

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Andy is rigth of course. I did not notice the mention of DE435, which restricts your options. Sorry.

Try and get a DE500? Those should be a dime a dozen. Salvage from an other system?

Google for "DE-435" + ethernet has many
hits.
I found this one interesting/detailed:
http://www.daemon-systems.org/man/tlp.4.html


Hein.

[TMcB]

Thanks everyone.

I think it was when I inially ran "show conf ewa0" that gave me the impression that the card was set to 10-Full.

Device Parent Medium/User Version Speed Duplex -------------- ----------------- ----
EWA0 CSMA/CD X-111 10 Full

Am I right in thinking that as "show dev/char" shows it configured as "twisted" that this means it is 10-half.

Bye

[Andy Bustamante]

"TwistedPair Line media type" indicates you're using the RJ-45 connectors and not the BNC options. The speed and duplex are listed below.

Whether to use autonegotiate or hard set the Alphaserver and switch is an ongoing question. VMS Engineering says that autonegotiate is now reliable, and you're running a recent version of VMS with 8.2. There's enough history of mismatch problems that many system managers got used to hard setting speed and duplex to avoid this issue.

Andy

[John Gillings]

Andy,

>There's enough history of mismatch
>problems that many system managers got
>used to hard setting speed and duplex to
>avoid this issue.

But it's hard setting that CAUSES the problem! Hard set at one end, auto at the other => duplex mismatch.

Best approach these days is auto everywhere. It's the default on most devices, so unless you really want to manually set every switch port (assuming you can!) auto is the simplest option. That way you don't need to be concerned about which cable is plugged into which socket.

Note that for GB Ethernet you don't have a choice. Everything MUST be auto, otherwise you get no flow control. (this is a place where OpenVMS should copy what Windows does for GB and not give the option to select anything other than auto)

[TMcB]

Hi

I've found a spare Compaq NC3131 10/100 card (part # 338478-001).
Does anyone know if this is compatible with the alphaserver 1000a?

Thanks

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

It's not on the official option list.
Do you need network speed on this node ? If not, you're not gaining anything. I have many nodes still doing 10 full.

Wim

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

This card is what was called a DE602-AA.

WIm

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

The firmware release notes mention that de500 support was includedm but nowhere the de6xx is mentioned. If you try it, make sure to have firmware 5.7.

And BTW, HP should be ashame about their website speed.

Wim