RTL8139 rev16 and Linux

[Sam Coward]

Hi all.
    I have a Sharp Actius A250, which has built in RTL8139 ethernet. I
am experiencing odd problems using this card in 10mbit networks. I am
running kernel 2.2.12 with a patch for the scheduling bug, and rtl8139.c
v1.08

    During large transfers from another host to the laptop, the traffic
seems to freeze and I have overruns in the RX buffer. Usually I have to
do an 'ifconfig down up' to fix the problem. But somehow, the other
hosts' network response time has gone awry - the TX queue has carrier
errors - useable, but data transfer is intermittent. 'ifconfig down up'
on the other host also alleviates this problem. The other host has a
3com Vortex. This problem does not seem to happen when I transfer the
files from, say, a machine with a NE2000, although I've had varying
success with hosts that have other NICs.

    I've also noted that if I compile linux with the option 'CPU is too
slow to handle full bandwidth', I can transfer significantly more data
before the overrun & freeze up.

--
regards,
Sam Coward (sam@ims.com.au),
Integrated Medical Systems
ph +61 7 3876 6851


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