3c905 detected but can't ping hosts

[Pascal Bleser]

Hi :)

I'm working in a german company and I'm pushing Linux everywhere I
can... and it's working - we'll be trying out some servers and
Linux clusters soon ;)

But that's not the problem. We use quite a lot of 3Com Vortex stuff
(3C905-TX - "Fast EtherLink XL PCI"), and I just can't make it work...

The card is detected by Linux, in fact, (ifconfig gives correct
parameters) and it works on NT :\
I can ping localhost and ping the host's own address, but as soon as
I'm trying to ping another host or someone tries to ping me, it
fails.
(when I ping from the Linux box, it's timing out after quite a while)
The LED on the card is on (and stays on all the time, as soon as I
plug the network cable into the card).
It's a 10/100 MBit, and we've got a 10MBit network there.
I've already set to 10MBit "manually" (with a DOS Disk from 3Com), and
the LED that's lightened on the card is the 10MBit one.
The network configuration is OK, and I've taken a NE2000 ISA card,
plugged it in, and everything worked. But unfortunately that's not a
solution, as we have a lot of boxes with those 3Com 9xx NICs and we've
already got some people with Linux on their boxes but who can't use it
because the NIC doesnt' work :((

I've heard there's a trick, even for NT: you have to disable Plug'n'Play
in the BIOS and set the IRQ "manually" in the BIOS to make the card work
with NT. We did that on a box (I mean: it was already done, because the
card works on NT) and it didn't help...

I've got the vortex-diag tool, but it doesn't help: the card *is* detected,
no problem, but pinging to the outside world just doesn't work :((
(so it can't be a irq or memory conflict: it gets detected).

Could anyone help, please ?
I'm sure this problem comes up quite often on this list, but I couldn't find
a solution in the archives :(

BTW, it's S.u.S.E. Linux 6.0 and I've tried the kernels 2.0.36, 2.2.0 and 2.2.3
and it didn't help :\

Thanks, and have a nice day folks ;))

  -o)  Pascal Bleser        | UNIX *is* user friendly.
  /\\  C++/UNIX Development | It's just selective about
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