> We use an AMD Athlon K7 processor with a Gigabyte GA-7IX mainboard.
> This was the case for both 3Com 3c900 Boomerang and 3Com 3c905C
> Tornado ethernet cards using the 3c59x driver. We tried the kernels
> 2.2.12, 2.2.13 and 2.3.31 without success.
> An SMC Ultra ISA ethernet card worked stable.
You established that the PCI/DMA busmaster logics/BIOS on the GA-71X
aren't what they are supposed to be, working.
> We thought the reason for the instability could be the bus-master DMA
> feature of the network cards. So we patched the 3c59x driver (the
> patch is appended at the bottom).
> This patch disabled the bus-master DMA. The 3c900 Boomerang works
> stable with it, the 3c905C Tornado does not work at all with the
> patch.
Patching a network driver that already has debugging switches to disable
DMA when your mainboard is most likely to be the cause of the problem
isn't the way to go here I'd say.
> All 3Com-cards work stable on other mainboards.
More reason to suspect the mainboard and not the cards.
Regards,
---------------------------draw-conclusion-here------------------------
Homme R. Bitter *NIX admin, BOFH, MCSE, parttime divine entity.
REM This is a comment, I realy, really, really love comments.
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