[solved] [renamed] DHCP timeout from Realtek 8139 card

[mcb30]

(2013-04-30 08:55)Maniek Wrote:  

Code:

REALTEK 0xbf120 EEPROM ID incorrect (0x0129); assuming no EEPROM
...
REALTEK 0xbf120 RX offset 0+40
REALTEK 0xbf120 RX offset 44+40

After various iterations of testing, I'm going to conclude that this is a hardware problem. iPXE is known to work with this specific NIC on a different machine. The machine on which problems are observed:

Quote:This is the configuration of the computer that not working DHCP iPXE:
...
DIMM1: RM56S281TA-13AC 256 MB PC133 SDRAM (3.0-3-3-6 @ 133 MHz)
DIMM2: LG GMM26416233ENTG-7J 128 MB PC100 SDRAM (3.0-2-2-5 @ 100 MHz) (2.0-2-2-4 @ 66 MHz)
DIMM3: 128 MB PC133 SDRAM (3.0-3-3-6 @ 133 MHz)

looks (from the mismatched DIMMs) to have been cobbled together from spare parts.

The fact that the EEPROM ID word reads as 0x0129 rather than 0x8129 suggests that bit errors are occurring somewhere. A single bit error such as this would also explain the strange RX behaviour; if the CPU were to erroneously read RTL_CR as having bit 0 (RTL_CR_BUFE) clear then this would produce the exact behaviour shown in the trace.

The older version of the Realtek driver present in gPXE uses port I/O rather than MMIO. It's entirely plausible that the hardware fault is affecting only MMIO.

I'm going to conclude that this is a hardware fault unless there is very strong evidence to the contrary.

Michael