3c905b timing out on Multia

[Jeff Lawson]

I've been trying to get a 3c905b working as a secondary interface in the
spare PCI slot in my DEC Alpha Multia.  I'm currently running a 2.2.1
kernel and the effect that I see is that I will be able to use the
interface without problems for maybe 5 hours or so.  However, after that
point the card seems to stop responding and all communications over it
stops.  I don't believe the card itself is fautly, since I've tried
replacing it with another 3c905b and have experienced the identical
problem after a few hours of operations.  I can resolve the problem by
using rmmod to unload the module for it and restarting networking.

Any suggestions on things I can try?  Would this necessarily be the fault
of vortex driver?



Message such as the following are logged:

eth0: Resetting the Tx ring pointer.
eth0: transmit timed out, tx_status 00 status e000.
  Flags; bus-master 1, full 1; dirty 733 current 749.
  Transmit list 00000000 vs. fffffc00039502d0.

  0: @fffffc0003950200  length 8000005c status 0000005c
  1: @fffffc0003950210  length 800000eb status 000000eb
  2: @fffffc0003950220  length 800000eb status 000000eb
  3: @fffffc0003950230  length 800000eb status 000000eb
  4: @fffffc0003950240  length 800000eb status 000000eb
  5: @fffffc0003950250  length 800000eb status 000000eb
  6: @fffffc0003950260  length 8000002a status 0000002a
  7: @fffffc0003950270  length 8000002a status 0000002a
  8: @fffffc0003950280  length 8000002a status 0000002a
  9: @fffffc0003950290  length 8000002a status 0000002a
  10: @fffffc00039502a0  length 8000005c status 0000005c
  11: @fffffc00039502b0  length 80000119 status 80000119
  12: @fffffc00039502c0  length 8000002a status 8000002a
  13: @fffffc00039502d0  length 8000005c status 0000005c
  14: @fffffc00039502e0  length 8000005c status 0000005c
  15: @fffffc00039502f0  length 8000005c status 0000005c

The version info reported by the driver at startup is:

3c59x.c:v0.99H 11/17/98 Donald Becker
http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html
eth0: 3Com 3c905 Boomerang 100baseTx at 0x9000,  00:60:97:84:d9:65, IRQ 15
  8K word-wide RAM 3:5 Rx:Tx split, autoselect/MII interface.
  Media override to transceiver type 0 (10baseT).
  Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame receives.