Cardbus ethernet - PCMCIA - eth0 - help please

Forum: Networking
Topic: Cardbus ethernet - PCMCIA - eth0 - help please
started by: john.martzouco

Posted by john.martzouco on Dec. 22 2007,13:54

Hi All,

I've had great success with the wireless card in the PCMCIA slots but am having trouble getting ethernet cards functional.

I have 2 identical laptops. I've tried both slots on both machines with the same results.

I have 3 different ethernet pcmcia cards sitting here and am getting the same faulty results from all of them I've tried two of them under Windows XP and they functioned a little better, but not much. Under XP, I was experiencing 75% packet loss from ping.

The last card I tried brought up some encouraging messages on bootup. I saw the words eth0 and ifup.

With every card, the pattern is the same. I see the Link light come on and stay on. Then I see the 10/100 light turn on and stay on. Then I see some flickering on the Activity light, but very little Rx happens.

The last card I tried is a Linksys NP100. This is what I found from dmesg | grep eth0 :

Code Sample

<6>eth0: NE2000 (DL10022 rev 05): io 0x300, irq 3, hw_addr 00:E0:98:80:8C:DB
<6>eth0: found link beat
<6>eth0: autonegotiation complete: 100baseT-FD selected

I've lost the information that was in ifconfig eth0, but I do remember seeing about 3000 in the Tx field, 1000 in the Rx field. I'll catch this info next time I hook it up (am using wireless now to transmit this).

The 3 cards that I've tried are:

1) Xircom RBE-100 Cardbus Ethernet 10/100
2) Xircom CBE2-100 Cardbus Ethernet II 10/100
3) Linksys NP100 (no gold band on top) (known to be 16 bit)

I've brought home a new 32 bit card, but don't want to open the packaging at this time because I have no reason to beleive that it will achieve any other results. The card I have waiting is:

4) Dynex DX-E201 32 bit Cardbus Ethernet 10/100

What is it that I'm not doing right?

Thanks,
John

Posted by roberts on Dec. 22 2007,16:11

My experience with Xircom wired pcmcia cards is that they don't do auto-neogation well. I have seen posts where using a static IP has helped.

Posted by john.martzouco on Dec. 22 2007,16:31

I use static IP for all my machines. Yes, I've already tried this with all the cards. Thanks.

Posted by curaga on Dec. 22 2007,16:50

I have a Xircom 16-bit 10Mbps ethernet/56k modem combo pcmcia card.. Pump doesn't work with it, but other than that, it works great.. Maybe you could try adding pci=assign-busses to your boot line?
It's something that can help with cardbus cards.. But they could also just be broken

Posted by john.martzouco on Dec. 22 2007,18:22

Quote (curaga @ Dec. 22 2007,11:50)

I Maybe you could try adding pci=assign-busses to your boot line?

It's something that can help with cardbus cards.. But they could also just be broken

I'll try the pci=assign-busses boot option.

Yeah, I worried that the first two might be bad that's why I've waited so long to bring it up. The last card is guaranteed good by a friend so now I think it may not be unit specific.

Posted by john.martzouco on Dec. 23 2007,12:05

I tried the pci=assign-busses option with the three cards this morning. The end result is that I still can't use them.

Some more information.

1) The Xircom RBE passed some packets in a ping test. There was 60% packet loss.

2) Both Xircom cards show xircom_tulip_cb in lsmod.

3) The Linksys card showed up in the boot sequence as a Linksys Everywhere card and then drivers were loaded for it.

PS - Should I mention that the pci=assign-busses boot option isn't written up on the F2 or the F3 page?

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Dec. 31 2007,01:13

Perhaps the autonegotiation is not correct? Try a lower link rate? Bad hardware... perhaps bad cable?

iirc, some users could not get some cards working after a reboot... perhaps try a full power cycle?