[realtek] Tx/Rx timeout with 8139

[James Perry]

Hi there,

I'm having a strange problem with the 8139 chipset. I have two 8139 based
devices- one onboard the mainboard, and a second PCI card- neither of
which work.

I can compile and load rtl8139.o without any issues; it detects the cards
and claims that everything is working correctly (it even detects the
announced capabilities of the network, 100baseTx-FD and 10baseT-HD in
this case). Unfortunately, that appears to be the limit of what I can do
with the network devices.

After being initialised, the network devices seem to be incapable of
sending or recieving anything. After attempting to recieve something,
ifconfig lists the devices as having sent nothing (0 packets, 0 bytes).
It also lists the number of packets recieved as 0, despite one of the
devices being connected to a somewhat busy network.

I've been trying to diagnose the problem for a couple of days, but to the
best of my knowledge there's nothing wrong with the cards. The only thing
I can think of is there could be some strangeness going on with the PCI
bus, but frankly I'm grasping at straws. :-)

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I should be looking at as a
potential cause of the problem?

James Perry