[vortex] 3c59x "just stops"

[Scott A. McIntyre]

Hi,

Over the past few months I've noticed that my 3c59x (3Com PCI 3c905B
Cyclone 100baseTx) just stops receiving traffic.  ifconfig will show
some vast number of received packets (this card operates in a receive
only mode, attached to a SPAN port on a Cisco 3500), but nothing
indicative of any errors which could enlighten me as to why it's stopped
functioning.

The system is a Linux 2.4.x kernel, using either the driver that comes
with that, or the driver available at scyld, or most recently someone
pointed out "LK1.1.3 25 April 2000, Andrew Morton
<andrewm@uow.edu.au>"'s version, which also has the problem.

I've tried resetting the device using mii-diag, which resets counters,
tried it as a loadable kernel module which I unload and reload, tried it
as a compiled in feature as well -- nothing helps or modifies the
behaviour.  The only resolution is a reboot.

I'm wondering, is this still something that could be associated with the
3com and associated drivers (I've tried a number of cards, all this
make/model, with similar results) or is it more likely to be SPAN/Cisco
related and the reboot forces a reset of the port at a level that
mii-diag/ifconfig/rmmod can't do?

The system has other interfaces, which remain functioning fine...

Thanks for any ideas.

Scott