stupid NIC tricks

[Frank Smith]

OK braniacs.  Here's today's challenge:

PM7200 running up-to-date full install YDL (2.3 + latest patches)

Cheap Linksys NIC installed (model LNE100TX, common as dirt, uses DEC Tulip 
chip) to get 100BT since builtin is only 10BT.

Latest pci-scan and tulip modules built and installed as per instructions to 
drive this board.

Boot probes board and insists Linksys is eth0 (builtin becomes eth1).

eth1 set to be OFF on boot (I'm not using it).

Here's where it gets interesting...

Cold boot brings up eth0 (Linksys) fine, ifconfig shows eth0 is handling 
packets, but NO IP-based traffic gets through (telnet, atalk, etc).

Warm boot (shutdown -r) brings up eth0 and EVERYTHING WORKS!

Another warm boot...same story.

Try cold boot (shutdown -h)...broken again (although ifconfig says 
otherwise)

Warm boot...WORKS AGAIN!

Any suggestions?  This seems like some sort of order dependency bug (i.e., 
something is done to the board registers or something else that survives a 
warm boot but isn't set at the right time on cold boot so the board never 
really makes it all the way up).  Note the driver for this board loads as a 
module if that matters. I think there may be some sort of generic driver in 
the mix too that's built into the kernel by default?

Sidenote: I also tried an SMC card based on the RealTek chip and the board 
wouldn't probe at all on boot.  Installing the driver (rtl8139) module 
finally got it to work as eth1 (builtin was eth0 in this case) but it kept 
crashing the machine on large ftp transfers with an "oversize frame" error 
or some such left in the log.

Odd sidenote: when the board is working, netatalk works great except the 
machine doesn't show up in the Chooser on other Macs.  They can enter the IP 
address directly and mount netatalk volumes but can't select it from the 
list.  When I turn off eth1 and use eth0 (builtin NIC), the machine DOES 
show up on the list as expected. Yes, I modify atalkd.conf to specify eth0 
or eth1 as appropriate so that's not it. Note: the SMC board did not have 
this problem.

Last straw: As an alternative, can anyone reccomend a cheap 100BT NIC that 
will be rock solid and stress free?  This is the final bit of functionality 
I really must have on this box.

TIA

Frank

_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com