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PCI Contents1

EtherExpress PRO/100 PCI Adapter Configuration Help

Click on the dialog box below for help on configuration parameters.

See Intel Electronic Services for technical assistance information.


FIFO parameter

Recommended setting:  FIFO=12

This parameter defines the FIFO threshold for requesting bus access.  For systems with high bus latency, this setting should be increased.  For systems with very low latency, this setting may be reduced.  For best performance, this should be set as low as possible without causing DMA over/underruns.


ON parameter

Recommended Setting: ON=272

The ON parameter limits the number of clock cycles the EtherExpress PRO/100 adapter will hold the bus for data transfers.  For best performance, this setting should be high enough for the Transmit FIFO, to be filled, or the Receive FIFO emptied in a single bus access.  The default setting for this parameter is 272.


OFF parameter

Recommended Setting: OFF=2

This parameter is the minimum number of clock cycles the EtherExpress PRO/100 adapter card will remain off the bus between data transfers.  For best performance, this setting should be set to a minimum, thus allowing the adapter access as needed.


EISA Location
EISA LOCATION parameter

Note - This parameter is only available if the driver was installed for EISA bus.  If installed for PCI bus, the NODE ADDRESS parameter will  be displayed instead.

The EtherExpress PRO/100 setup program will fill in this list with the slot numbers of EtherExpress PRO/100 EISA adapters detected.  Select from this list the adapter to which you wish the driver attached.  If installing multiple adapters, each adapter must be configured separately, one at a time.  Note that in order for the Setup utility to properly detect EISA adapters, they must first be configured via the EISA Configuration Utility (ECU) which came bundled with your EISA computer.


OK button
Click on the OK button to save the

currently selected parameter choices.


CANCEL button
Click on the CANCEL button to abort the

configuration changes made.


HELP button
The HELP button launches the EtherExpress PRO/100 help file..


THRESHOLD parameter

Recommended Setting:  Threshold=16

The number specified by the threshold parameter is multiplied by 8 to produce the number of bytes at which the adapter will start emptying the EtherExpress PRO/100's internal transmit FIFO onto the wire.  Thus, with Threshold=200, the number of bytes is 1600.  This is greater than the max packet size for ethernet, so  the adapter will not attempt early transmits.  This is obviously the safest setting, but the best performance is achieved when the threshold parameter is as low as possible (without producing underruns).  To experiment, first set it at 16 and then increment it if performance seems to drop significantly.  It is probably unsafe to set the transmit threshold parameter below 200 for systems with many busmastering cards, or systems with otherwise high latency.


SPEED parameter

The Speed parameter lets the EtherExpress PRO/100 adapter know what speed to use on the Ethernet wire.  The choices are 10Mbits/sec, 100Mbits/sec, and Auto Detect.  In Auto Detect mode, the adapter will detect if its environment can support 100Mbit speed, and if so will set speed to 100.  Otherwise it will set speed to 10.  The default is Auto Detect.


Advanced Configuration Parameters

 EtherExpress PRO/100 Advanced Configuration Parameters

These options should be altered by an experienced user only.

Please use the defaults if you do not know what these parameters do.

Click on the options below for help on the indicated parameter.

On

Off

Fifo

Threshold

Map Registers

Reset Defaults


NODE ADDRESS parameter

Note - This parameter is only available if the driver was installed for PCI bus.  If installed for EISA bus, the EISA LOCATION Parameter will  be displayed instead.

The Node Address parameter contains the physical ethernet node address burned into each EtherExpress PRO/100 adapter's on-board ROM.  When configuring multiple EtherExpress PRO/100 adapters in a PCI bus, this value is used to assign individual cards to drivers and protocol stacks.

The EtherExpress PRO/100 setup program will display the node addresses at which EtherExpress PRO/100 PCI adapters were detected.  Select from this list the node address of the adapter to which you wish the driver attached.  If installing multiple adapters, each adapter must be configured separately, one at a time.


MAP REGISTERS parameter

Recommended Settings:

EISA:	MapRegisters = 32

PCI:	MapRegisters = 10 for NT 3.5 or earlier

MapRegisters = 32 for NT 3.51 or later

Map registers are system resources which are used in physical to virtual address conversion with bus mastering cards.  The MapRegisters parameter specifies how many of these should be allocated to the EtherExpress PRO/100 driver.  As a rule, the higher the value of the MapRegisters parameter, the better the performance.  It must be noted, however, that map registers are system resources, and thus if too many are allocated (ie more than the OS has available), the driver will fail to load.

NT3.5 currently has a restriction in the Microsoft Hardware Abstration Layer (HAL) that causes a shortage of map registers when the computer is configured with extra physical memory.  By obtaining an updated HAL.DLL and putitng it into NT's SYSTEM32 directory, the MapRegister parameter can be increased for improved performance and support of additional netcards.

Warning: If the number of map registers configured is not available, the driver will not load, or the system can crash when accessing the floppy disk drive!


EISA Contents1

EtherExpress PRO/100 EISA Adapter Configuration Help

Click on the sample dialog box below for help on the indicated parameter.

See Intel Electronic Services for technical assistance information.


PCI Contents2

EtherExpress PRO/100 PCI Adapter Configuration Help

Click on the dialog box below for help on the indicated parameter.

See Intel Electronic Services for technical assistance information.


EISA Contents2

EtherExpress PRO/100 EISA Adapter Configuration Help

Click on the dialog box below for help on the indicated parameter.

See Intel Electronic Services for technical assistance information.


Reset Defaults Button

Choose this button to reset all of the parameters for the IntelEtherExpress PRO/100 adapter to the factory defaults.


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