[vortex-bug] 3c556 TX bug ???

[Felix Lindner]

Hi list,

I discovered a funny issue with the following driver on a Laptop:

3c59x: Donald Becker and others. www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
02:06.0: 3Com PCI 3c556 Laptop Tornado at 0xe800. Vers LK1.1.16

When doing a netcat to a echo-like server such as this:
nc -n -v 1.2.3.4 7 </dev/urandom
and having a tcpdump running beside that, the communication would stop
after aprx 30 seconds. Then, I could see traffic on the network using
the tcpdump but my NIC did not send anything anymore. I assume the TX
queue raised an error and awaits a reset from the driver it never gets. 

Any ideas on what this is? Could that be related to the driver messages
I see once in a while in syslog:
 eth0: Transmit error, Tx status register 90.
   Flags; bus-master 1, dirty 703097(9) current 703097(9)
   Transmit list 00000000 vs. cff70440.
   0: @cff70200  length 80000036 status 00010036
   1: @cff70240  length 80000036 status 00010036
   2: @cff70280  length 80000036 status 00010036
   3: @cff702c0  length 80000036 status 00010036
   4: @cff70300  length 80000036 status 00010036
   5: @cff70340  length 8000005f status 0001005f
   6: @cff70380  length 80000036 status 00010036
   7: @cff703c0  length 80000036 status 00010036
   8: @cff70400  length 8000005f status 8001005f
   9: @cff70440  length 80000036 status 00010036
   10: @cff70480  length 80000036 status 00010036
   11: @cff704c0  length 80000036 status 00010036
   12: @cff70500  length 80000036 status 00010036
   13: @cff70540  length 80000036 status 00010036
   14: @cff70580  length 80000036 status 00010036
   15: @cff705c0  length 80000036 status 00010036

Please CC: me on replys since I'm not subscribed. 

Thanks in advance
Felix