Table of Contents

General description

CHARON-AXP supports emulation of the following network adapters:

• DE435
• DE450
• DE500AA
• DE500BA
• DE602
• DE602AA

Each of them is a PCI Ethernet adapter based on the DEC21040 (DE435, DE450, DE500AA and DE500BA) and the Intel i8255x (DE602 and DE602AA) PCI Ethernet adapter chips for the Alpha.

CHARON-AXP maps the virtual adapter to a dedicated Ethernet adapter in the Windows host system.

All the emulated controllers are loaded and configured in the same way.

 The Ethernet adapter in the Windows host system must support dynamic changes of its MAC address (i.e. no reboot of the host system is required to change the MAC address), which is the case with nearly all modern Ethernet adapters.

 By default the PCI Ethernet adapters use first available PCI slot. If instead some particular slot is needed, refer to this section for details of specific placement of PCI peripherals on CHARON-AXP PCI bus.

Configuration steps

To configure CHARON-AXP networking, follow these 3 steps:

1. Load network adapter (if required)

   Use the "load" command as shown below.
   
   Example:

   For DEC21040 adapters	For Intel i8255x adapters
   load DE500BA/dec21x4x NIC	load DE602/i8255x NIC

    By default each loaded virtual network adapter uses first available PCI slot. If instead some particular slot is needed, refer to this section for details of specific placement of PCI peripherals on CHARON-AXP PCI bus.

   In AlphaStation 400 configurations use the following syntax for network adapter loading:

   load DE500AA/dec21x4x NIC irq_bus = isa

   
   .

2. Load "packet_port"

   Load "packet_port" to connect network adapter to the host hardware network card (or to a virtual network interface).
   
   Example:

   load packet_port/chnetwrk NDIS interface = "connection:Charon"

   .

3. Connect the loaded "packet_port" to the loaded virtual network adapter

   Connect the network adapter to the "packet_port" by setting the interface name.
   
   Example: 

   set NIC interface = NDIS

   
   

Please note:

• The interface name can be either "(disabled)" for a disabled interface or "connection:<Windows network interface name>"
  
  Examples:
  load packet_port/chnetwrk NIC1 interface="(disabled)"
load packet_port/chnetwrk NIC2 interface="connection:CHARON_NIC"


• The AlphaServer DS15 and DS25 contain two built-in PCI Ethernet adapters. Models and names (EI* or EW*) of them depend on configuration addon. Choose one of the two or none, but not both. The first instantiates onboard network interfaces as EIA and EWA. While the second - EWA and EWB (enabled by default for backward compatibility)

  Example:

  #include ds25-onboard-nics.icfg
include ds25-onboard-nics-ew.icfg


• The specification of "chnetwrk" is not mandatory, but it is still used for compatibility.

Configuration parameters

Each virtual network controller has the following parameters that are specified with the "set" command:

interface

station_address

rx_fifo_size

adapter_mode

Example

DE602 and DE602AA network adapters link speed and duplex settings

Regardless of the "adapter_mode" setting in CHARON VM configuration file (see above), DE602 and DE602AA network adapters remains in "Auto-negotiation" mode, since the EIDRIVER of OpenVMS checks for EIx0_MODE environment variable when configuring the network card.

So mode propagation is implemented in CHARON-AXP via SRM console EIx0_MODE environment variable ("x" is A, B, C... depending on CHARON-AXP configuration), for example:

 The EIx0_MODE variable name is case insensitive, while its values are case sensitive! This is feature of OpenVMS EIDRIVER.

The values are:

Example:

Important notes:

• Please note that EIx0_MODE environment variable controls only the setting which the emulated network adapter reports to the guest operating system running on CHARON VM. It does not change any settings of the host adapter mapped to the virtual adapter! In case if the settings of the host adapter have to be changed please refer to the host Operating System User's Guide for details on how to do it.
• In case the "Auto" value is set CHARON-AXP collects the settings from the mapped host network adapter directly, assuming that all speeds above 100Mbps are represented as 100Mbps (maximum value). The resulting duplex setting corresponds to the duplex setting of the mapped host network adapter.

Packet Port

The CHARON-specific "packet_port" interface establishes a connection between an Ethernet adapter in the Windows host system and a network adapter in the virtual HP Alpha system.

For every virtual adapter instance loaded, one dedicated host Ethernet physical adapter is required.

To create instances of the "packet_port", use the “load” command in the configuration file as follows:

Example:

"packet_port" uses several configuration parameters to control its behavior.

interface

port_enable_mac_addr_change

port_retry_on_tx

port_pending_rx_number

port_pending_tx_number

suspend_msg_on_mac_change

log

log_flush_period

legacy_mode

Example

CHARON-AXP supports VLAN adapters. If for some reasons you are going to use them, proceed with their installation and configuration according to the network adapter's vendor's User's Guide and then use the resulting VLAN interface the same way as the regular network interface.