[eepro100] Compaq DL580 dual port nic

[Donald Becker]

On 15 Aug 2002, Matthew Hall wrote:

> 	I wonder if you guys can help me. I had a strange experience with the
> above card a couple of weeks ago when setting up a compaq 2u rack (can't
> remember the model) with our linux distro (2.4.18 kernel).
> The card was connected to an isp on adsl (static address) and 
> would intermittently drop and re-establish the connection. We dropped
> mii-diag on the interface in "--watch", and watched the card drop the
> connection and re-establish every 30 seconds (exactly (to millisecond)),
> which is pretty crazy (!?!?!?) (and unexplainable).

There is no 30 second "lightning bolt" in the driver (at least in my
driver releases).
Did you see any error log messages indicating a reset on the Linux end?
If not, the link drop was very likely from the DSL modem.

> What was stranger was, that after rebooting the dsl modem, the card
> started doing it every 4 seconds, then soon went to every 15 seconds
> (approx).

This does pretty much indicate that the DSL modem was triggering the
link drop.  It could be a cable problem -- a bad cable could cause the
DSL modem to see invalid receive signals.

> We eventually swapped the nic for another eepro100 single porter, and it
> worked fine....

The original eepro100 transceiver might not have been generating a
strong signal.  Or this might be a marginal situation "solved" just by
physically re-plugging device.  I recommend checking the cable, and
swapping the original NIC back to see if the problem can be reproduced.

> I have a couple of ideas where the problem may lie, i was just wondering
> if any of you have experienced similar troubles and could give a hand
> (and a good explanation if so):
> 1) Buggy bios (apic messages causing misfunction / irq mismapping)

This wouldn't cause a problem unless the driver ended up resetting the
transceiver. 

> 2) Hardware (fscked card / mobo)
> 3) Driver (this is where youz come in: no ideas)

-- 
Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993