3c905C-TX/TX-M not working on Dell PowerEdge 1300

[GOD]Anck · 12-13-2004, 07:59 AM

Okay, here goes... I'm sitting within kicking distance of a Dell PowerEdge 1300 machine. It has a 3Com ethernet adapter which lspci shows nicely:

Code:

testsuse:~ # lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:02.0 PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21152 (rev 03)
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
0000:00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
0000:00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
0000:00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 74)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage IIC AGP (rev 7a)
0000:02:0b.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940U2/U2W / 7890/7891 (rev 01)

and again in more detail:

Code:

0000:00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 74)
        Subsystem: 3Com Corporation 3C905C-TX Fast Etherlink for PC Management NIC
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at cc00 [size=f8000000]
        Memory at fe000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128]
        Expansion ROM at 00020000 [disabled]
        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

The card has an interrupt, which it is not sharing, according to /proc/interrupts anyway:

Code:

testsuse:~ # cat /proc/interrupts
           CPU0
  0:   18511479          XT-PIC  timer
  1:      10008          XT-PIC  i8042
  2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  8:          2          XT-PIC  rtc
 10:      28079          XT-PIC  aic7xxx
 11:        455          XT-PIC  eth0
 12:      82372          XT-PIC  i8042
 14:          0          XT-PIC  uhci_hcd
 15:     137637          XT-PIC  ide1
NMI:          0
LOC:          0
ERR:          0
MIS:          0

It shows up in /proc/ioports and /proc/iomem as well:

Code:

testsuse:~ # cat /proc/ioports
0000-001f : dma1
0020-0021 : pic1
0040-005f : timer
0060-006f : keyboard
0070-0077 : rtc
0080-008f : dma page reg
00a0-00a1 : pic2
00c0-00df : dma2
00f0-00ff : fpu
0170-0177 : ide1
0376-0376 : ide1
03c0-03df : vesafb
0800-083f : 0000:00:07.3
0840-085f : 0000:00:07.3
0cf8-0cff : PCI conf1
cc00-cc7f : 0000:00:0e.0
  cc00-cc7f : 0000:00:0e.0
cce0-ccff : 0000:00:07.2
  cce0-ccff : uhci_hcd
d000-dfff : PCI Bus #02
  dc00-dcff : 0000:02:0b.0
e000-efff : PCI Bus #01
  ec00-ecff : 0000:01:00.0
ffa0-ffaf : 0000:00:07.1
  ffa8-ffaf : ide1

Code:

testsuse:~ # cat /proc/iomem
00000000-0009ffff : System RAM
000a0000-000bffff : Video RAM area
000c8000-000ccfff : Extension ROM
000d0000-000d07ff : Extension ROM
000f0000-000fffff : System ROM
00100000-0fffdfff : System RAM
  00100000-002eb8b4 : Kernel code
  002eb8b5-00397dff : Kernel data
0fffe000-0fffffff : reserved
f0000000-f3ffffff : 0000:00:00.0
f5000000-f5ffffff : PCI Bus #02
f6000000-f6ffffff : PCI Bus #01
f9000000-faffffff : PCI Bus #02
  f9fff000-f9ffffff : 0000:02:0b.0
    f9fff000-f9ffffff : aic7xxx
fb000000-fdffffff : PCI Bus #01
  fbfff000-fbffffff : 0000:01:00.0
  fc000000-fcffffff : 0000:01:00.0
    fc000000-fc1fffff : vesafb
fe000000-fe00007f : 0000:00:0e.0
fec00000-fec0ffff : reserved
fee00000-fee0ffff : reserved
fff80000-ffffffff : reserved

I don't see anything strange, the card however is not working properly. When connected to an ADSL router or a switch, the link status light stays off. I've replaced it with an identical card, same problem. I've replaced the cable, same problem. The only thing that seems to work so far, is to move the card to a different pci slot. SuSE finds it on boot, I configure it exactly like I did before, and it works. Until I reboot a second time. After that, the problem is back, and the card wont work unless I move it again. If anyone could help me understand what's happening here, that'd be much appreciated. Swapping the card to a new slot every morning gets really old really fast.

XavierP · 12-14-2004, 05:30 PM

This really is just a thought but .... on my laptop, under various distributions, doing a soft reboot means that the network card doesn't get picked up when the box comes up. But powering down completely and then powering back up (the hard reboot) doesn't give the same problem. Is this the case with you?

[GOD]Anck · 12-15-2004, 03:19 AM

Thanks for your reply, however this is not the case for me.

I've done hard and soft reboots as well as complete shutdowns and the problem persisted. I've "solved" it temporarily by swapping out the 3Com ethernet card for a Realtek one... so far it behaves normally. I'd still like to understand what exactly is going wrong with the 3Com cards but for now it looks like I'll stick with whatever works.

XavierP · 12-15-2004, 04:32 AM

Does dmesg give any hints? or anything in /var/log?

[GOD]Anck · 12-16-2004, 07:50 AM

dmesg tells me the interface is being brought up just as one would expect. The only time I get anything logged is when I configure the interface to use DHCP. /var/log/messages shows a timeout, saying the DHCP server couldn't be reached. This doesn't surprise me, because the connection light on the router never came on, indicating a physical or data layer problem. When configured to use a static IP address, nothing abnormal is logged. ifconfig shows all the correct parameters, and after a connectivity test shows packets have been sent, but not received.