Trouble with binary data and EtherExpress PRO/100+ PCI

[Ian Lance Taylor]

I am having trouble with the EtherExpress PRO/100+ PCI card.  I have
three different identical systems with three different cards, and they
all have the same problem.

The Linux symptom is that I am unable to install either Red Hat 5.2 or
Red Hat 6.1 using an NFS mounted drive.  The installation starts OK,
but after a while it fails to load any packets.  Using tcpdump shows
the packets being sent from the NFS server, but the system on which I
am doing the install keeps requesting the same packet again and again.
(These systems do not have CD/ROM drives.)

I tried an embedded RTOS (RTEMS) on the system.  This RTOS uses the
FreeBSD TCP/IP stack and drivers.  I was able to recreate a similar
problem: an upload failed.  I found that the card would accept the
packet and pass it up the TCP/IP stack, but the packet would have a
checksum error.  I checked the actual data, and it did have a single
bit error.

The odd part was that every time the card received the packet, it
would have the same error.

The really odd part is that after resetting the system, it was not
necessarily the same packet which had the error.  But some error would
always occur during an upload of a large (2.5M) file.  The error would
always occur at more or less the same point in the upload, but not at
precisely the same point.

I was able to upload a large text file just fine.  It seems to only be
a binary file which has trouble.

Note that a similar problem appears to be occurring with two
completely different drivers and two completely different TCP/IP
stacks.  So it sounds like a hardware problem.  But I'm having the
same problem on three different systems.  How could that be?  I know
the EtherExpress is not a new card, although of course it is possible
that I have a new rev--the systems were purchased recently.

Has anybody heard of such a problem?  Can anybody suggest a
workaround?  Can anybody suggest somebody else to ask?

Ian
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