AMD Lance problem on ELC

[Ben Roberts <broberts@mbhs.edu>]

I recently installed potato on an ELC with all the standard stuff (not much
choice with an all-in-one :-) ).  In preparation to use it as a ipmasq firewall
(in retrospect a bad idea since serial port speed is a meager 38400) I got a
10BaseT transceiver for the AUI output of the AMD lance onboard card.  However
I have been unable to get the network connection working.  The transceiver has
a power indicator light on, which leads me to believe both the adaptor and the
transceiver work.  Whenever I send packets throught the interface I get carrier
errors in ifconfig's report, and the LEDS on the transceiver for send/receive
do nothing.

I have been using the 2.2.15 kernel (I don't know what revision since it has
since been removed from the ftp site; I suspect from march) with the lance
driver compiled in.  The startup messages appear normal (assigns eth0 to the
lance card), as does the kernel routing table and ifconfig output.  The card
also shows up in /proc/interrupts, and ifconfig reports the correct io address
and IRQ.  The routing table and /etc/network/interfaces are identical to my 586
box (with the exception of the IP address) and both were configured at
installation time.  What could be wrong here, besides a hardware problem?  I
have no assurance that the lance card works on this; it has gone untested for a
long while since I'm the first owner crazy enough to find a use for it.

I plan to try some of the following soon, once I finish a couple hundred megs
of package downloads; are these worth trying?:
	- Test the transceiver on my 3c509 connected to my 586, which has both
		RJ45 and AUI (if this doesn't work it could mean the card is
		defaulting to the RJ45, so I don't know how much help it will
		be)
	- Try the 2.2.17pre6 or the 2.2.16 kernels
	- Try to get the OpenBoot PROM to find the card (I could use some help
		on this too; probe-sbus??, or set up a RARP server somewhere
		and connect to it?  I'll play with this once my system is
		finished installing)
	- Try to compile the lance driver as a module (out of desperation;
		probably won't work)

Any input is greatly appreciated; the summer is fast ending and with it my
opportunity to finish this!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben Roberts, Class of 2001 (1st of millenium), founding member of MBLUG

"If your motherboard smells like carcinogens it's time to get a new
motherboard."
        -- Ben Roberts, refering to his SPARC