Re: MSI KT3/4 AMD motherboards and 3C905CX-TXM NIC

Bogdan Costescu wrote:

> [ Moved from the beowulf list to the vortex driver list ]
> [...]
> Are all cards connected to the same Cisco switch ? Do you have by any 
> chance another switch to use for a comparison ? I'd be interested 
> especially in a small non-managed switch, as there the possibility of an 
> improper setting is inexistent.

Hello, Bogdan.

Sorry for the late reply - I've been away from my email...

Yes, all the cards are connected to the same switch. I've just bought 
two new 2+48 port switches and I'll let you know how we get on with 
them. Previously, we used two 8-port passive hubs. I've not tried them 
with the new MSI motherboards. I'll do some experiments with them.

>[...]
> They don't have any configuration at BIOS level. The cards have their own 
> EEPROM with default settings and eventually some internal commands used 
> for Wake-On-Lan.

What I wondered about was BIOS-level PnP configuring the cards?

>[...]
> Just to be sure, have you checked (and swapped) network cables ?

Yes, bought new cables recently but the 'old' ones work fine with the 
Gigabyte motherboards. I've eliminated all the 'obvious' causes...

>[...]
> The autonegotiation is not restarted by the driver. This is in order to 
> keep any already negotiated link; this is a feature especially for some 
> Cisco switches that activate their ports 1 minute after successfull link 
> establishment - the link is established usually at power-up, as you have 
> observed, and by the time the driver is loaded, the port is activated so 
> things like DHCP work; if the link would be reset, the 1 minute would need 
> to be counted again and would induce failure of DHCP (most clients give up 
> also after 1 minute).

Thanks for your helpful comments about this Bogdan. It's been very 
frustrating trying to get to the bottom of this problem.

-- 
Dr. A.J.Travis,                     |  mailto:[email protected]
Rowett Research Institute,          |    http://www.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt
Greenburn Road, Bucksburn,          |   phone:+44 (0)1224 712751
Aberdeen AB21 9SB, Scotland, UK.    |     fax:+44 (0)1224 716687

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