[tulip] switches and tulip drivers

[Wandered Inn]

I'm having a heck of a time getting a couple of cards to work together
with a netgear 10/100 autosensing switch.  The setup is a netgear
fa310tx and a linksys nc100.  I've even swapped the linksys nc100 with a
netgear fa311 (using the natsemi driver).  I have a 5 port hub there
now, working fine, but when I drop the switch in place, I get 'no host
to route' errors from both machines.  It appears that the switch is
properly detecting both cards and indicates that they both are
100baseT/full duplex.  Both cards have leds that indicate 100baseT as
well.

I've tried forcing both cards to 10baseT to see if that would work, but
I can not get the linksys nc100 or the netgear fa311 to do so.  Is it
not possible to force the linksys nc100 and the netgear 311 to 10baseT? 
I've also tried passing parms via /lib/modules.conf, but debug=? 
appears to be the only one that makes any difference.

Netgear support claims that it's my cables, although I was using stock
cat 5 belkin cables and even replaced them with a couple I made that
were quite shorter. Still no go.
I doubt the switch is bad since I had previously tried this same set up
with a sohoware 5 port autosensing switch, with the same results.

Any suggestions as to what is the problem here would be greatly
appreciated.

tulip-diag output for the netgear 310tx:

tulip-diag.c:v2.08 5/15/2001 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
 http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
Index #1: Found a Lite-On 82c168 PNIC adapter at 0xf800.
 Port selection is MII, half-duplex.
 Transmit started, Receive started, half-duplex.
  The Rx process state is 'Waiting for packets'.
  The Tx process state is 'Idle'.
  The transmit threshold is 72.

tulip-diag output for the linksys nc100:

tulip-diag.c:v2.08 5/15/2001 Donald Becker (becker@scyld.com)
 http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html
Index #1: Found a ADMtek AL985 Centaur-P adapter at 0x6200.
 Comet duplex is reported in the MII status registers.
 Transmit started, Receive started, half-duplex.
  The Rx process state is 'Waiting for packets'.
  The Tx process state is 'Idle'.
  The transmit threshold is 128.
  Comet MAC address registers 02782000 ffffd271
  Comet multicast filter 0000000000000000.
 Use '-a' or '-aa' to show device registers,
     '-e' to show EEPROM contents, -ee for parsed contents,
  or '-m' or '-mm' to show MII management registers.


--
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric@denali.atlnet.com

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds.
The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit
to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his
intelligence." - Albert Einstein