Problem with 5 DE-530CT+ and Asus P2B-F

[Wolfgang Walter]

Hi,

I have a strange problem with 2.0.36/37 and the tulip-driver (the
version
coming with the kernel as well as 0.90). I posted this already on
linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu but nobody answered, so I try it here.


The hardware is a asus P2B-F (Celeron) with 5 d-link 530CT+. Four of
them
are connected to BNC, the first one to a hub.

I assigned fixed IRQs to the pci-slots.

Now, when booting, only the first card (TP) is properly recognized by
the   
driver. For the other ones it reads 00:00:00:00:00:00 as MAC-address. It
now
believes these 5 cards are a multiport card:

        card 0: properly recogniced, correct MAC-address, correct IRQ 
        card 1: MAC-address read is 00:00:00:00:00:00, driver uses the
                one of card 0 + 1, IRQ of card 1                      
        card 2: as card 1, but card 0 + 2                             
        ....

Of course interface eth1 - eth4 now don't work very well (you need to
send
packets to eth0 to get the other interfaces to receive).


(cat /proc/pci shows the correct IRQs of the cards).

The funny thing is: if you disconnect the BNC-segments, the driver can
read
the MAC-address of the cards, so that all cards get recogniced
correctly. Then
you can reconnect the
segments.                                               

This workaround is not really acceptable.

I did not observe this problem with any other of our routers, even an
identical
pc (but 2 cards less) does not show this
one.                                  

Any idea?

Thanks,

Wolfgang Walter

P.S.: I'm not subscribed to this list.