Bus-mastering problem???

[Kevin Ford]

Hello,

I have just upgraded from old DEC ISA 10mips to lovely 3com905-TX cards (I
am not using a hub - I am using a direct cable with the 'twist' - I have
lights, and the cable worked with the DECs). However on my 'lesser' machine
I am getting the following message at my console Login prompt just before
xdm starts up X.

eth0: transmit timed out, tx_status 00 status e601.
eth0: Interrupt posted but not delivered -- IRQ blocked by another device?

This is followed every couple of minutes by:

eth0: transmit timed out, tx_status 00 status e201
eth0: Interrupt posted but not delivered -- IRQ blocked by another device?

It finds an IRQ OK, and I can vouch for all the other parts of the system
and have found their IRQ's in the /proc/interrupts file. It's a fairly old
machine (two of the ISA ports have a local bus port!!!), I was wondering
whether the motherboard could be a physical limitation on the bus-mastering
capabilities of the card, or am I barking up totally the wrong tree? I
managed to install the other card in my K6-2 without problems, and I've
managed to swap them as well (I assume without problems, there are no error
messages, and pinging from it 'lights the lights' on the 'lesser' box, but
obviously I get no return). Both boxes can ping themselves. I've forced them
in the EEPROM to run 100Mbps full-duplex.

So why doesn't it work???

Kevin Ford
NT Support
x2064