Re: Ethernet errors

Paul Gortmaker (p_gortmaker@yahoo.com)
Wed, 29 Sep 1999 04:17:44 -0400

Brian A May wrote:
>
> Hello All,
>
> It was recently suggested that I replace my Etherexpress adaptor
> with a cheap NE2000 driver, in order to fix the problems.
>
> Fair enough, but I still having similar problems with an ISA NE2000
> card. Alan Cox once told me that the cheap set was known to be good, and
> it must be an interrupt conflict problem. While I disagreed with the
> interrupt conflict (nothing else uses IRQ 11), I did change the IRQ from
> 11 to 15. I thought it fixed the problem, but it still re-occurs.
>
> However, with 2.2.12, I get more error information:
> Sep 28 08:45:10 snoopy kernel: eth0: mismatched read page pointers 0 vs ff.
> Sep 28 08:45:10 snoopy kernel: eth0: Too much work at interrupt, status 0xff
> Sep 28 08:45:30 snoopy kernel: eth0: trigger_send() called with the transmitter busy.
> Sep 28 08:45:39 snoopy kernel: eth0: Tx timed out, excess collisions. TSR=0xff, ISR=0xff, t=907.
> Sep 28 08:45:39 snoopy kernel: Hw. address read/write mismap 0

[...]

> The Ethernet adaptor just died.

That appears to be an accurate description - all the 0xff values (that
includes the m'cast reg read/write check Alan added) that are being
read tend to indicate the card fell off the planet. (Oxff = vacant I/O
port). You have some sort of hardware problem/misconfiguration here.

> Warm rebooting didn't fix my problem. It detected the adaptor
> was on IRQ 3, it is actually on IRQ 15. In addition, my PPP connection
> failed to start (probably because it needed IRQ 3).
>
> I had to cold boot (as always) to fix the problem.

Is the card a PnP card? It almost sounds like the card is being
deactivated and requires the PnP BIOS to reactivate it again via
a cold boot.

> Any ideas? I seem to be having lots of networking problems lately.
> It would be really nice if I could fix just 1...

Make sure the ISA bus is running default 8MHz, conservative settings
for I/O cycle wait states (if supplied in CMOS setup), double check
for I/O conflict with another device (and/or try different I/O
location, and even try another ISA bus slot...). Try another ne2k
card if you have one handy, or try that one in another machine.

> Also, another point, with Etherexpress I get messages like:
>
> Sep 14 15:51:31 share kernel: eth0: tx interrupt but no status
>
> Coincidence?

Yes - given that they are two different computers.

Paul.

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