Problem:

Under certain conditions, the second ethernet port (eth1) on the TS-7300 becomes very slow, resulting in low throughput (on the order of kbytes per second).

Solution:

Technologic Systems has implemented an interface to a new Altera Ethernet core.  This core replaces the Open Ethernet core previously present.


Here is a rough guide of what you will need to do to update your TS-7300 SD card to use the new bitstream containing the fixed eth1 core.
I have copied the commands used from my notes of what I did in the hopes that it will be useful and save you time.  I cannot guarantee this is the quickest or easiest way to accomplish the task.

1. Copy the new bitstream to the SD card

Here are some sample commands you might use if you have the bitstream on an NFS service accessible from the TS-7300:
To use, replace everything in <angle brackets> with the details of your system.

ifconfig eth0 up <myip.adrs>
mount -o nolock,vers=2 <ip.adrs>:/<path> /<mntpt>;cd /<mntpt>
mount -o remount,rw /dev/sdcard0/disc0/part3 /mnt/root
cp eth/ts7300_cyclone2_top.rbf /mnt/root/boot/ts7300_cyclone2_alt.rbf
cd /mnt/root/boot
ln -sf ts7300_cyclone2_alt.rbf ts7300_cyclone2.rbf
mount -o remount,ro /dev/sdcard0/disc0/part3 /mnt/root

Alternately, you could copy the bitstream to the SD card from an SD card reader from a Linux PC like this:
mount /dev/<sda3> /<mnt3>
cp ts7300_cyclone2_top.rbf /<mnt3>/boot/ts7300_cyclone2_alt.rbf
pushd /<mnt3>/boot
ln -sf ts7300_cyclone2_alt.rbf ts7300_cyclone2.rbf
popd
umount /<mnt3>

2. Install the new alt_eth driver and modify the startup to use it

If you have the SD card mounted from the Linux PC then you would do something like this:

sudo sh # if you are not root; or use "su" if you don't have sudo

mount /dev/<sda2> /<mnt3>
<edit> /<mnt3>/bin/startfpga
	1. delete the line containing "open_eth"
	2. insert the following line before the line containing "tsuart0":
insmod alt_eth
	(note: it has been observed that inserting it after the uarts are
	 loaded results in a system hang)
umount /<mnt3>
	mount /dev/<sda3> /<mnt3>
	cp /<pathto>/alt_eth.o /<mnt3>/lib/modules/2.4.26-ts11/kernel/drivers/net
	umount /mnt3

3. Copy the new kernel to the SD card

e.g. from the Linux PC:
dd if=zImage of=/dev/<sda1> bs=131072


4. Re-compile any modules as needed for the new kernel. The module "af_packet.o" has been supplied as DHCP will not work properly in the new kernel without it.