[vortex] Problems with Redhat 7.1 and 3c095c

[Donald Becker]

On Mon, 8 Oct 2001, Bill MacAllister wrote:

> I have a dual boot system, Windows 2000 Server and Redhat 7.1.  I will
..
> with Linux.  This system originally had a Netgear card in it.

Which netgear card, and what were the problems?

>  But, when I
> starting having problems I decided to replace it with a more well-known-to-
> the-Linux-community card, a 3com card, 3C905C-TX-M.  Initially I thought
> that this fixed my problem, but while things are a bit better the problem
> still exists.
> 
...
> When I look with netstat -s the only thing that I see that looks amiss is
> in the TCP section:

What does /proc/net/dev report?

[[ Netstat was written for BSD-style systems, which don't have network
error counters. Thus netstat doesn't report the full information set. ]]

> I did build a copy of mii-diag and vortex-diag, but this really is getting
> over my head and I could use some help understanding what is going on.

Both of the outputs look fine.

What driver version are you using?
What is the detection message?

> $ vortex-diag -e
> Index #1: Found a 3c905C Tornado 100baseTx adapter at 0x6800.
...
>   Vortex format checksum is incorrect (0090 vs. 10b7).
>   Cyclone format checksum is incorrect (00 vs. 0x06).
>   Hurricane format checksum is incorrect (0x29 vs. 0x06).
> Bad checksums?  Is this the issue?  If it is I don't have a clue what to do
> about it.

No.  The EEPROM checksums are frequently reported as wrong on newer 3com
boards.  3Com keeps changing the fields that the checksum covers, and
some of 3Com's own boot-ROM code seems to update EEPROM parameters
related to network booting without correcting the checksum.

Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993