IBM Thinkpad X20 and 3com 556B mini pci nic

I have a IBM Thinkpad X20, which originally didn't have a network adapter
installed. Lately I bought a 3com 556B mini-pci network/modem combo. This is
a card which IBM also supplies (supplied?) with the X20. My intent was to
devote the computer to FreeBSD only, and the adapter is supported, however
this strange problem occured:

To get the adapter into a working state, I have to either a) boot windows,
and then soft boot (ctrl+alt+del) into FreeBSD, or b) enable the cards
"Managed Boot Agent" feature, and wait till it times out during boot. If I
follow either of the procedures, the card will show a correct link status,
and autonegotiates. If I hard boot straight into FreeBSD, the card is
properly detected by the xl driver, resources and IP address are assigned,
but the link light doesn't lit up, ifconfig shows "status: no carrier".
Somehow the adapter is not properly initialized, no matter what ifconfig
parameters I try. I've read about someone experiencing similar problems,
though that's in linux:
http://www.scyld.com/pipermail/vortex/2002-February/001667.html No idea if
it might be related.

I have no idea if this is a recent change in 3coms hardware, or something
else. It took some time to receive a new adapter, since it was out of stock.
Maybe it's a new revision, but I'm a newbie. I've tried changing resources
in BIOS to no use. I do have latest BIOS and embedded controller update
installed 2.21/1.33.

Marcin Kot

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