Uhm, if you have sluggish performance with 1 core you have other issues.  I am running on one and the machine is still blazing fast.  Check your Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor) and see if your % System cpu use goes rather high when using your hard drive or otherwise.  When mine was stuttering with 1 core, this was the problem.  It does it with both cores as well, its just you have one free to do stuff while the other gets wasted.

Anyways, worth a check.

Experience panic whenever downloading larger files

I get the same problem as Kiamo.
I get a kernel panic in Leopard as soon as I open my browser.
I have to run my Leopard with 1 core in order to make it stable.

Works perfect on my Tiger 10.4.8 though.

As the original forcedeth driver and this driver are using the same framework, the kernel panics seem to be framework-related, because im getting kernel panics with the original forcedeth driver in leopard too when i try to download larger files.

Thanks, that is use full information, I didn't know it was happening in the forcedeth driver as well. This means that the framework is to blame. Not very good news though. I knew the framework was not exactly according to Apple's standard so to say but I was under the impression it was fairly stable.
I did some test's yesterday in Tiger transferring 24gb (computer 2 computer), downloading with azareus and watching an web cam at the same time with no problems. (so far I didn't have a freeze or kernel panic yet..)

I will do my best and see what I can find. if anyone can give me some more information would really help!

Mike.

yesterday i did experience two "freezes" i use to do a lot of tasks alltogether, i had various firefox downloads, i was using a torrents file downloader tvwatch or something like that, transmission for download the torrents that tvwatch downloaded and when i opened vlc to play a video file, it kind of freezed... istat didnt show a great cpu use, my mouse was running fine, its an usb wireless mouse attached to ps/2 port and my keyboard its a wired ps/2, mouse cursor was working without problems but apps didnt response, i clicked on spaces to change desktop and after 5 minutes there were the four selection desktops but still freeze, at the end i did shutdown my computer pressing power button for 4 seconds, on the next restart it did show a lot of errors on startup i didnt know what they were pointing to, ill try to write down next time.

sorry if its not very helpful...

i have an striker motherboard with one lan port disabled on bios.

great job mate, here is asus p5n32e-sli 680i chipset...

it was the last thing but the most important on my computer that was not working and now it works... great efforts!!!!

driver loads saying my card is not known to work as expected from forcedeth, after 30 secs delayed boot as u suggested, it worked fine, i did download couple of files big ones and didnt see any issue maybe bcoz i have a little fast net speed (16mbits) but so downloading couple of 100 mb files took only 1.5 mins and didnt have any issues yet... no freezing at the moment... hopefull wont have in the future,

i m testing this on 10.4.8 at the moment...

i will test it on 10.4.10 and 10.4.11 later today to see any difference...

sounds like an issue with leopard only because everyone with tiger has got it working.

Thats what MeDevil said about the forcedeth-related kernel panics:



Option 1 seems to be the "faster" one, while Option 2 should bring a more stable version when coded corretly

Ok, after looking at the source code a bit more I think what is happening is that we have a 'multithreading' problem.

Why?
- Working on 1 core works.
- Several applications usings the NIC can cause problems (1 app. in general works).
- Leo deals differently with multi-threading then tiger. (Tiger working fine)
- Source code is not 'multithreading safe'.

Currently the driver supports multi-threading, although in a very wacky way, so what is happening is that two applications are writing to the output queue at the same time, normally a locking mechanism is in place which will prevent this, but in our case it is allowed and resulting in freezes and kernel panics etc.

The plan is to bring the driver back to 'single threaded' mode and hopefully get this issue resolved.
What I am looking for are some volunteers who are experiencing problems, and have of course have Leo. installed who are willing to test the driver. If you are, send me a PM with your e-mail address, I don't want to post the driver here yet because it is all very experimental. I will make the changes later on tonight and when I am done, e-mail them out.

Thanks!

Mike.

Thanks Mike, please check your PM! Cheers!

Hmm.. I think mike is right thats its a multi core issue because when i just update software update it works fine but when i do that and other things i get a kernel panic. I just reinstalled everything.

Yeah, the more I think about it the more that makes sense. Eager to see what the solution is.

Likewise

Ok, thanks guys! I have enough people by now who are willing to put there hackintosh on the line and test the driver. The changes are done so hopefully this will do the trick. Anyone who signed up will receive the driver shortly.

Once again, Thanks! really appreciated!

Mike

hi mike,

i posted a comment saying it doesnt freeze, it freezes after some extensive usage... in fact the whole thing freezes at once..

great work though, i hope bugs can be fixed soon...

got exactly the same problem on my machine, i'm running the same mobo as mysticus, only with core2duo. extensive usage just freezes the whole system. for example i ran software update and after about 60mb of downloaded updates, the system just locked up and i had to restart.

cu and thanks for the efforts on this driver!

Ok, just a quick heads up, i am aware of the system freezing under heavy usage.
Currently I am testing a new driver with the help of some people from this forum (Thanks

So as soon as we have got it stable enough for release I will post the updated driver.

Thanks mike . We are here if you need any testing or help.

Update:

Tiger:
Tested with driver in #1 post under tiger, had to add device id:0x0269 in info.plist. Works like a charm!

Leo:
Did same thing under Leo, it froze my system if doing same dling from same site. Got email with test driver will test it tonight and report it back here.

Thanks for great jobs! Mike.

If it can help, i tried your driver on NForce 4 and freezes stops when I put cpus=1 at boot .

It's the same with all forcedeth.kext (-d, -nock, -nock-d) I found, boot with cpus=1 fix the issue.

Mike, just let you know. The second test driver under leo is working great so far, if too many threads jammed the traffic, it will stop sending or receiving not freeze the system like your described in the mail. Cool!

PS, just found out, if I turn to xp and turn back to leo, network won't work, have to shutdown power for a while and turn back on to get NIC working.

Just to quell the crowd before everyone starts asking for the "test driver".

I can not say the same about my own system. I've had two kernel panics running the new driver all under network load. One seemingly at random (because I was simply browsing the net) and another shortly after initiating a network file transfer with my MacBook.

Let's keep news of the status of the drivers to e-mails so that Mike isn't swarmed with people asking for a driver that's probably going to freeze their system just as often as it'll work correctly. =)

Sorry, OB, you are right. This is still under testing. All others please be patient, and give mike some free time for further development and troubleshooting.

Still experiencing issues*kernel panic* under network load and after switicing from windows to mac i have to remove the power source to get it up and running again. Keep up the good work!

hello mike,

i was wondering, why would u not post the beta as well, so more people can test it and give u more feedbacks therefore u can tweak quicker?

just suggestion,

thank you, and good luck with the development...

if you want it PM him, he isnt hiding it or anything

Mike, also be sure to check out the new IOEthernet framework from the apple developer site. I've noticed that a buffer is free() where in tiger it was not (a buffer passed by the forcedeth driver).
Let me know if you need help with this!

Best regards, Domenico.

Got it working with Asus M2NPV-VM!
Added 0x026910DE to Info.plist and it goes!
Please add it to the list, because it works!
Typing from Opera in Mac OS X!

no mate, i didnt say he is hiding or anytg, i just suggested it would be nicer to receive more feedback, bcoz it would give more input to development, i might be wrong or told my suggestion in a wrong way...

other than that it s cool, i waited long enough already if it doesnt work, it s not the end of the worl, can buy 10+ $ nic with working id, can solve it as well, just trying to help in brain storming...

I use this extension on OsX 10.4.11 Tiger with the Semthex 8.8.1 kernel... and i'm experiencing the same freezes. So it seems its not only a problem with leopard.

they look random, but most of the time occur during or a minute after some heavy network load. (till now: when itunes (network shared music) and safari were used at the same time.

MB: Asus Striker Extreme (680i chipset)
CPU: intel C2D Q 6600 (all 4 cores enabled)

I installed the following modified kexts:
- Titan (for geforce QuadroFX 3500)
- Apple nforce ATA : removed SATA dev-id, else is crashed osx.
- Nforcenetworking: gives a warning at startup that the device is not known to work...continuing anyway
- AppleAzalia

maybe I'm looking over something, but the problem seems to be the same.

I'm quite new to this whole hackintosh thing.... trying to get my Tiger stable before installing leo
If i can help...give me a sign....

You're using 10.4.11 with the 10.4.8 kernel? That's messed up....

GAH! This kext worked precisely once for me. Just enough to whet my appetite!

I'm really not sure what was different that particular boot. It was probably the only boot where I wasn't actively trying to get the kext to load! I had to go into the Network prefpane to change my DNS server on my Airport connection and what did I see? There was an entry for my wired NIC! Even though it claimed to be unplugged, I tried to renew (well, obtain, really) its lease anyhow. And… it got an address!

The performance was excellent. Well, better than Airport drivers for my BCM card anyhow. It seemed to have issues after about 4Mbps. (I didn't get a chance to see if it was artificial packet loss or what. The network transfer ended too soon! ) Needless to say, using WPA doesn't give me transfers of anything near 4Mbps, so I'm eager to see a truly working version.

The big things I noticed were that my MAC is reversed (See below), and it can't sense whether I have a cable connected. I really suspect the latter is the main cause of my general failure to use the driver.

Now, howsabout some info from me? I have an nForce 430 MCP61 (10DE:03EF) (RTL8201N PHY). And here is the ifconfig output, as of this moment:

en2: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether ac:20:55:b9:1b:00
media: autoselect (<unknown type>) status: inactive
supported media: autoselect

Note that the byte order is reversed on the MAC address. I'm running Uphuck's 10.4.9 on AMD, if it matters.

If you're looking for someone with an RTL8201 PHY to do some testing, please feel free to contact me.

But, definitely keep up the great work. This is the first driver that's been able to get a DHCP lease at all. (Even the ones out there which get the byte order and media status correct seem to get something else wrong…) Thanks.

whats the latest mike?

Here's a follow-up to my previous, lengthy, post that may help some of the more knowledgeable out there. And as this is most certainly a kludge that may or may not work reliably, I'll not help people do this if they can't figure it out. (Except for maybe Mike! )

I can now reliably get online with my NIC. After posting above, I got the idea that just maybe the NIC is always available, but unaddressable, since it's in the ifconfig output. And, sure enough, I'm using it now!

All I did was give en2 an IP manually (via ifconfig, and on the correct subnet!), then I went into the Network prefpane and set the IPv4 address to none, applied, then set to DHCP. Voilá! I have a static IP. (Though the prefpane shows that I should have acquired a "normal" DHCP address. I can't get my normal lease since my MAC address is backwards. I'd fix that with ifconfig, but I can't acquire a lease at all. *shrug*)

I can't use my DHCP-assigned address this way. This irritates me. But, it IS a workable solution! Hopefully that helps Mike out if he finds my above post odd. Since the workaround's far more odd, but it can point to a distinct code path!

Since I reboot so rarely, I can live with this for now. And, if necessary, use this post as a reminder.

That leaves one last thing before I have a Hackintosh with drivers for everything: my nForce 430 (6150) video! And that looks to be an impossible dream since MacVidia 1.0.7 isn't available anywhere anymore. (And that's apparently the only version supporting this chip!)

Again, Mike, if you need a tester, I'm game. I'm probably the only poster here who sits on a /12 as a matter of course, with multiple IPs assigned to the Mac. (Hence my desire to get rid of this "spare"!)

And, finally, for comparison with the above, my "working" ifconfig output:

en2: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 172.16.32.88 netmask 0xfff00000 broadcast 172.31.255.255
ether ac:20:55:b9:1b:00
media: autoselect (<unknown type>) status: inactive
supported media: autoselect

And, note that there's always the chance that you'll have to add a default route if the prefpane doesn't do it automatically from the lease!

does this driver work well with Tiger?

yes for me

so you didnt have any problems jae-v? i found a nifty sata to ide adapter on ebay. this means i can have near sata perfomance on my hack, and i don t have to ivnest in a shitty ide drive lol

nah not on tiger...lol lemme know how that adapter works out for ya

Anyone know if the 650i builtin RTL8211BL LAN works? My MSI P6N-SLI Platinum just lacks that working. That and SATA.

It works for me in Leopard 10.5.1 with my eVGA 680i, and I do have the freeze problem. However, if I boot with -x, it works flawlessly. Anyone know why this might be?

Hello.. plz help.. When i go to hardware ids tab in winxp device manager i get the following    {1a3e09be-1e45-494b-9174-d7385b45bbf5}\NVNET_DEV0269.This seems like a strange device id..I am using ASUS M2NPV-MX board much same like the M2NPV-VM board.Both use External Marvell PHY What device id should i insert in the kext???ThanksUPDATE...ITS WORKING NOW!!!!!I inserted the "0x026910DE" device id and it worked..Thanks Thanks Thanks

Hello, I'm having some freezing problems with this driver on leopard.. My computer froze 2 times while surfing on opera. Sometimes it works fine & sometime doesn't.

Is this due the driver or opera??

EDIT!!!

It froze 3rd time on safari just after i posted this...

I am using this device id "0x026910DE".
I have to switch of the power for 30 seconds to make this work.

Plesae help..

we're all having this problem. Its the ethernet driver you have to use one core for it to work properly. Read the 680i thread by jae-v

havent heard from mike in a while, guess this project has stalled

has anyone gotten the beta drivers to work?

yep... that would be nice to have some news.... kind of christmas present

For those of us with the kernel panicing on Leopard due to the nForce4 driver, Planetbeing is working on a fix for this issue.

excellent