"Transmit timed out" with EtherExpress Pro100B

[Serguei Koubouchine]

On 6 Oct 1998, Osma Ahvenlampi wrote:

> On a Dell PowerEdge 2300, using Linux 2.0.35 with the aic7xxx
> 5.1.0-pre15 and eepro100 1.03 drivers I get the "eth0: Transmit timed
> out status 0050 command 0000" error with the associated massive
> broadcast flooding when I install the appletalk module (this machine
> is intended to be a Samba/Netatalk file server). I was able to
> determine the cause of the problem with help of the list archive,
> however the release notes for this driver seemed to indicate the bug
> should have been fixed by now. It most clearly isn't, though.
> 
> Additionally eepro100-diag just crashes on line 298 when I try to run
> it, and mii-diag doesn't tell a lot..
> 
> As far as I understand, the multicast_filter_limit option doesn't work
> with kernel 2.0.x (at least it didn't seem to take when I put it in
> /etc/conf.modules). I haven't tried patching the driver yet.

The eepro100 driver is BUGGY. Unfortunately enough, Donald Becker seems to
consider it being top quality, so we don't have any hope to get those
adapters work in our machines :-( The old driver included in the kernel
trees does work with any number of multicast filters provided this number is
one... Donald's recipe for the driver is "Don't use gated", which does
effectively mean "Don't use eepro100 at all"... All bug reports sent to
Donald seem to go to /dev/null - no answer, no reaction at all :-(

So being a realist I'd suggest everybody to forget about eepro100 existance
at all...

=======================================================================
Serguei Koubouchine aka the Tamer < > The impossible we do immediately.
e-mail: ksi@gu.net   SK320-RIPE   < > Miracles require 24-hour notice.
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