[vortex] 905C: 3c59x unusably slow / 3c90x fine

[Stefan Hoffmeister]

Hi, 

I am experiencing massive performance problems with the 3c59x driver
(module) shipping with the 2.4.2 kernel of Caldera OpenLinux 3.1 (beta).
The same problem seems to exist with the module delivered with RedHat 7.0
(2.2.16) and Mandrake 7.2 (2.2.17, IIRC).

"Tiny" transmits will work fine - e.g. ssh / telnet to a host on the LAN
works as expected -, but any attempt to transmit some more bits (10 MB
file, remote X session) will result in throughput of about 1-2 KB/s.

The 3c90x module delivered with SuSE 7.0 / 7.1 (and RedHat 7.0 / Mandrake
7.2) works perfectly fine, yielding throughput of about 8000 KB/s, all
other things being equal.

There do not seem to be any warnings anywhere related to this.

I am going through a 10/100 hub; the other machine is running a 2.2.19
kernel with an Intel eepro100 module.

I have pasted the boot messages from the 3c59x module below - any other
information I could provide?

How can I get the 3c59x module show acceptable performance?

TIA,
Stefan

PS: In case you wonder about that plethora of distributions - it's part of
my job.

****************

Apr 19 11:43:12 stefan-bt kernel: 3c59x.c:LK1.1.13 27 Jan 2001  Donald
Becker and others. http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
Apr 19 11:43:12 stefan-bt kernel: See Documentation/networking/vortex.txt
Apr 19 11:43:12 stefan-bt kernel: eth0: 3Com PCI 3c905C Tornado at 0xb000,
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:0b.0 to 64
Apr 19 11:43:12 stefan-bt kernel:  00:01:02:19:5d:33, IRQ 10
Apr 19 11:43:12 stefan-bt kernel:   product code 4552 rev 00.13 date
03-27-00
Apr 19 11:43:12 stefan-bt kernel: Full duplex capable
Apr 19 11:43:12 stefan-bt kernel:   8K byte-wide RAM 5:3 Rx:Tx split,
autoselect/Autonegotiate interface.
Apr 19 11:43:12 stefan-bt kernel:   MII transceiver found at address 24,
status 782d.
Apr 19 11:43:12 stefan-bt kernel:   Enabling bus-master transmits and
whole-frame receives.
Apr 19 11:43:12 stefan-bt kernel: eth0: scatter/gather disabled. h/w
checksums enabled