Strange cutting out problem with tulip driver.

[Eliot Muir]

Hi,

I have a strange cutting out problem with my TCP/IP ethernet connection
using the tulip driver.

I'm running two machines, one Linux running a Mandrake Redhat distribution
and the other is a Windows NT 4.0 machine.  They're connected using 20m
of BNC cable and have both been assigned static IPs (no other machines
are connected).

The behaviour is that I have to ping from the Linux box to the NT box to
get the TCP/IP connection working.  Then everything works fine, I can use
telnet, samba and ftp etc. etc. with no trouble.

Then usually after about half an hour all the TCP/IP connections break and
the only way I seem to be able to get the TCP/IP working again is to go
to the Linux box and ping the NT box.  I usually have to do this a couple
of times before it works.  Once it starts being able to ping again and the TCP/IP
connections work until it cuts out again after half an hour.

The printout from dmesg is:

Linux version 2.2.10 (root@testbox.interfaceware) (gcc version pgcc-2.91.66 19990314 (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #12 Fri Nov 5 18:41:18 NZDT 1999
Detected 400920929 Hz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 399.77 BogoMIPS
Memory: 63244k/65472k available (916k kernel code, 412k reserved, 864k data, 36k init)
CPU: Intel Celeron (Mendocino) stepping 05
Checking 386/387 coupling... OK, FPU using exception 16 error reporting.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfb350
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux NET4.0.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
Starting kswapd v 1.5 
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [SPP,PS2]
parport0: no IEEE-1284 device present.
Detected PS/2 Mouse Port.
Serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
hda: ST310232A, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hda: ST310232A, 9768MB w/512kB Cache, CHS=1245/255/63, UDMA
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
tulip.c:v0.91e 5/27/99 becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
eth0: ASIX AX88140 rev 16 at 0xd400, 00:80:AD:F0:21:23, IRQ 5.
eth0:  EEPROM default media type Autosense.
eth0:  Index #0 - Media MII (#11) described by a 21140 MII PHY (1) block.
eth0:  MII transceiver #1 config 1000 status 786b advertising 01e1.
eth0:  Advertising 0001 on PHY 1, previously advertising 01e1.
Partition check:
 hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 < hda5 hda6 > hda4
NTFS version 990411
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 36k freed
Adding Swap: 128484k swap-space (priority -1)

I'm happy to do what it takes to print out more debugging information
if it helps - has anyone else seen anything like this?

Cheers,
Eliot

--
Eliot Muir, Technical Director                 iNTERFACEWARE
mailto:eliot.muir@interfaceware.com  
Voice 64-21-333068      http://www.interfaceware.com

Makers of iNTERFACEWARE Chameleon 
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