41 replies to this topic

[Shailua]

Thank you for the further feedback, everybody. It's definitely useful for me to know what specific cards are working and what aren't. I've uploaded a new version that should hopefully keep a better eye on the link status and changes to it. It might help with some oddities when the card goes up/down during sleep/wake.

[MostlyHarmless]

p.H, on 03 November 2012 - 12:29 AM, said:

congrats.
What version are you using ?

Version 1.2.1, although I'll probably give the shiny new 1.2.2 a go this weekend.

[p.H]

MostlyHarmless, on 03 November 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

Version 1.2.1, although I'll probably give the shiny new 1.2.2 a go this weekend.

I will try it too.

Shailua, on 03 November 2012 - 09:13 AM, said:

Thank you for the further feedback, everybody. It's definitely useful for me to know what specific cards are working and what aren't. I've uploaded a new version that should hopefully keep a better eye on the link status and changes to it. It might help with some oddities when the card goes up/down during sleep/wake.

two kexts inside the folder.
one in Debug one not.
Which should I use ?  The one not in debug folder ?

[Shailua]

p.H, on 03 November 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

two kexts inside the folder.
one in Debug one not.
Which should I use ?  The one not in debug folder ?

Provided it works okay for you, the one not in the Debug folder. The debug version is the same thing but it just prints more log information. The regular one should only print major errors if they occur.

[p.H]

Shailua, on 03 November 2012 - 11:46 PM, said:

Provided it works okay for you, the one not in the Debug folder. The debug version is the same thing but it just prints more log information. The regular one should only print major errors if they occur.

Yep, i tested it yesterday.
My hack boots much slower after using this version. Maybe I'll compare it with previous time.   Will send feed back.

[Shailua]

p.H, on 04 November 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

Yep, i tested it yesterday.
My hack boots much slower after using this version. Maybe I'll compare it with previous time.   Will send feed back.

Thank you for the feedback. The kext routine that tells Mac OS X that the card is enabled will delay for at least two seconds in this latest version until the software detects that the link is up properly. If the link detection in the hardware is being odd, it will pause anywhere up to six seconds, which is probably a bit too conservative. I'll have a look at adjusting it.

[p.H]

Shailua, on 04 November 2012 - 12:52 AM, said:

Thank you for the feedback. The kext routine that tells Mac OS X that the card is enabled will delay for at least two seconds in this latest version until the software detects that the link is up properly. If the link detection in the hardware is being odd, it will pause anywhere up to six seconds, which is probably a bit too conservative. I'll have a look at adjusting it.

you mean if I boot without plugging the cable the hack will pause 6 seconds ?

[theconnactic]

Hi, Shailua! Thank you for your effort, really. The AtherosL1Ethernet needed indeed a refreshment for Mountain Lion: with Lion it used to work without issues, but since i switched to Mountain Lion (now i'm on 10.8.2), despite the kext still loading and recognizing my hardware, it behaves oddly: in System Preferences, it shows like a ethernet cable is connected, even when it's not, and the connection actually does not work, even when it appears to correctly identify ip and dns servers.

So i gave your latest one a go. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me yet: the kext loads and the hardware is shown at System Information, but the internet does not connect and what's shown in System Preferences is the exact opposite of the older unusable kext: the cable is reported as not connected, even when it is!

Anyway, i'll give the older iterations of your kext a shot and report back here. Once more, thank you, man, for your amazing work.

[Shailua]

p.H, on 04 November 2012 - 04:24 AM, said:

you mean if I boot without plugging the cable the hack will pause 6 seconds ?

hehe, good point. I tend to forget sometimes that some machines don't have their ethernet cable plugged in at boot.

theconnactic, on 05 November 2012 - 05:29 PM, said:

Hi, Shailua! Thank you for your effort, really. The AtherosL1Ethernet needed indeed a refreshment for Mountain Lion: with Lion it used to work without issues, but since i switched to Mountain Lion (now i'm on 10.8.2), despite the kext still loading and recognizing my hardware, it behaves oddly: in System Preferences, it shows like a ethernet cable is connected, even when it's not, and the connection actually does not work, even when it appears to correctly identify ip and dns servers.

So i gave your latest one a go. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me yet: the kext loads and the hardware is shown at System Information, but the internet does not connect and what's shown in System Preferences is the exact opposite of the older unusable kext: the cable is reported as not connected, even when it is!

Thank you for the feedback! In general the process of smoothing out the link status reporting and still keeping everything working such as Bonjour entries in Finder with Wake On Demand has been a bit of a trial-and-error headache process. I've been looking through what I can in the (mostly pre-Intel) sourcecode for Apple's own ethernet drivers and I think I've narrowed down the "right" way of doing things. I'll try to get another bugfix release out ASAP now that I've finished the second ALXEthernet release. Fortunately both drivers share some very similar high-level code so it shouldn't be too difficult.

[p.H]

Shailua, on 06 November 2012 - 02:14 PM, said:

hehe, good point. I tend to forget sometimes that some machines don't have their ethernet cable plugged in at boot.



Thank you for the feedback! In general the process of smoothing out the link status reporting and still keeping everything working such as Bonjour entries in Finder with Wake On Demand has been a bit of a trial-and-error headache process. I've been looking through what I can in the (mostly pre-Intel) sourcecode for Apple's own ethernet drivers and I think I've narrowed down the "right" way of doing things. I'll try to get another bugfix release out ASAP now that I've finished the second ALXEthernet release. Fortunately both drivers share some very similar high-level code so it shouldn't be too difficult.

I will test for AR8152 to see whether the link status works fine or not

[ultrazonestudios]

Hi !

Shailua, you're an angel ! Your driver is working flawlessly for me in my Z77X-UD5H after several months of problems (mainly workgroup issues). So now everything is fine !

Thanks for your hard work and cheers from Spain !

[Shailua]

Okay, new 1.2.3 version posted. If everything works smoothly enough with it then I'll mostly stick to bug fixes on this driver and focus more on the ALXEthernet driver since it supports the same cards and more. About the only differences I've noticed on my 8151 between the two drivers is that link autonegotiation seems better with AtherosL1cEthernet, but top speeds seem greater with ALXEthernet. The former seems to have trouble breaking over the 100MB/s rate in my very limited testing.

ultrazonestudios, on 09 November 2012 - 09:17 PM, said:

Hi !

Shailua, you're an angel ! Your driver is working flawlessly for me in my Z77X-UD5H after several months of problems (mainly workgroup issues). So now everything is fine !

Thanks for your hard work and cheers from Spain !

Thank you for the kind feedback! If there's one board that should definitely work well with the driver, it's the UD5H.

[p.H]

I have to say the 1.2.3 version is working flawlessly for my AR8152 v1.1 . Thank you  so much, Shailua.
The link status is without doubt improved. Booting without plugging the cable is just fine.
Once again, thank you so so much.

[ultrazonestudios]

Hi again !

After using version 1.2.2 for several days I've noticed that your driver doesn't allow my computer to sleep, and also shutting down is sometimes a problem. Screens and hard drives seem to shut down but the fans are still on.

After these problems I disabled the Atheros card from bios and enabled the Intel card. With this change sleep and shut down working again.

If you need any diagnostic information, please ask me. I would love to collaborate in any form.

Thanks in advance !

[charlienail]

THANK YOU!

[Shailua]

ultrazonestudios, on 11 November 2012 - 10:25 AM, said:

Hi again !

After using version 1.2.2 for several days I've noticed that your driver doesn't allow my computer to sleep, and also shutting down is sometimes a problem. Screens and hard drives seem to shut down but the fans are still on.

After these problems I disabled the Atheros card from bios and enabled the Intel card. With this change sleep and shut down working again.

If you need any diagnostic information, please ask me. I would love to collaborate in any form.

Thanks in advance !

Hi. I'm not sure why sleep might not be working. Does your motherboard use UEFI or a regular BIOS? If it's a BIOS, there may be a DSDT issue or something related to ACPI. I'm afraid my knowledge of such things is very limited.

You might perhaps try the ALXEthernet driver instead. It's mostly on par with the AtherosL1cEthernet driver aside from some more advanced features I haven't enabled yet. The power management code might be more up to date. Part of the power management for these cards is in the low-level undocumented Atheros MAC/PHY code that is difficult for me to modify blindly. The rest is just PCI and IOKit stuff that should be working fine according to my understanding of the specs and sample code.

[ultrazonestudios]

Quote

Does your motherboard use UEFI or a regular BIOS?

I'm on F14 UEFI BIOS.

Quote

You might perhaps try the ALXEthernet driver instead.

I'll try and let you know.

Thanks and cheers from Spain !

[rals2007]

Shailua

Also include SL version if you can

Thanks

[maddeneye]

Thanks for this. I have ga-b75m-d3v 1.0. ALXEthernet worked BUT copying to samba shares in virtualbox (linux guest) always results in a hard freeze. Copying to samba shares in OSX is OK. This driver seems to work perfectly, in virtualbox and in the host OSX (mountain lion).

[Methanoid]

@Shailua

Do you think we will see an AR8162 driver any time soon? I like the look of Asus Vivobook but it has that LAN chip...