[tulip-bug] Adaptec QuadEther and Kernel 2.4 woes

[Bernd Raschke]

Hi!

(always wanted to do a "IYFPH[1] woes" subject :-)

Over the weekend i have been trying to get the following combination to
work (without success):

Pentium Pro 200, 
Adaptec Quad Ethernet card (4 DEC 21140 AFAIR), 
Linux 2.4.3,
tulip driver

With 2.2.x the combination worked like a charm, with 2.4 i got all sorts
of lockups, failed initializaions or just no-go's :-( After lots of %&^$@&!
it drilled down to the following symptoms: 

With 2.2 or the alternative driver in 2.4 (de4x5), the tulip driver assigns
every one of the four chips its own interrupt (e.g. 20 through 23) The first
chip (eth0) works fine, bit if i ifconfig eth3 it does not receive any 
packets, the interrupt count for eth0 is running up at an anormal speed and
eth3 doesn't get any interrupts at all.

I don't have the complete output from tulip-diag here right now (and the
machine in question is offline), but for eth3 it said someting like "No RX
buffers" and "Interrupt sources pending".

I finally tried the alternative DEC driver, which did the job (and also
shared one interrupt between all four of the chips).

I'm sorry some of the data is a bit foggy (as mentioned, the machine is
offline (in the back of my car :-)) I this is a bug and not just plain
stupidity on my side, i'd be glad to offer help (if only for a limited
time, as this card is supposed to go into production soon).

Regards,
	Arty

[1] Insert Your Favorite Problem Here
-- 
Bernd Raschke, Dipl.-Inf.
NetAge Solutions GmbH, Dingolfinger Str. 6, 81673 München
Tel.: +49-(0)89-666 584-0, Fax : +49-(0)89-666 584-11
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