[eepro100] Fixed wait_for_cmd timeout in Compaq Presario 2700T with Redhat Linux 7.3

[Michael A Chase]

A couple weeks ago, I converted my Compaq Presario 2700T laptop from WinXP
to dual boot with Redhat Linux 7.3.  The network interface was almost
unusable; it was continually hanging and I needed to disable and reenable
eth0 every few seconds during data transfers in order to use it at all.

The network interface for the 2700T is an built-in Intel EtherExpress Pro
100B which is reported in the system log to use i82557/i82558 with i82555
as the primary interface chip.  Thd driver reports using IRQ 10 which is
shared between PCI devices 02:08.0 and 02:05.0.  The version messages from
the driver provided by Redhat are:

   eepro100.c:v1.09j-t 9/29/99 Donald Becker http://www.scyld.com/network/eepro100.html
   eepro100.c: $Revision: 1.36 $ 2000/11/17 Modified by Andrey V. Savochkin <saw@saw.sw.com.sg> and others

This driver appears to be much older than the latest driver at the Scyld
website.  Should I pester Redhat to use the newer one?

Thank the gods for the URL in the version string.  It lead me to this
maillist and I found what appears to be the solution in the list archives.

One of the messages mentioned a possible conflict between the Linux APM
module and the eepro100.  Since the APM module doesn't work with the
Presario 2700T anyway I uninstalled the APM module and now my network is
operating normally.

The only changes I have made since the network was almost unusable because
of wait_for_cmd timeouts are subscribing to this list and removing the APM
module.  I plan to remain subscribed for a couple weeks just in case that
was the fix.

-- 
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