via-rhine fails to get Ethernet card address

["Wim van der Meer" <vdmeer@geosearch.co.jp>]

I am a new Linux user, and could use some help determining what the problem
is with my Corega FEther PCI-TXM card, which has a VIA VT6102 chip. I have
Potato installed with the via-rhine module. I have read a whole bunch of
manuals, howto's and FAQ's, but I could not find anything that was helpful.

I think that the problem is that the hardware address of the Ethernet card
is not detected properly, but I have no idea what I can do to solve this.

Here is the relevant part (I hope) of my syslog file:

[snip]
kernel: via-rhine.c:v1.08b-LK1.0.0 12/14/2000  Written by Donald Becker
kernel:   http://www.scyld.com/network/via-rhine.html
kernel: eth0: VIA VT6102 Rhine-II at 0xd800, 00:00:00:00:00:00, IRQ 9.
kernel: eth0: Transmit timed out, status 0000, PHY status 0000, resetting...
last message repeated 4 times
[snip]
kernel: eth0: Transmit timed out, status 0000, PHY status 0000, resetting...
last message repeated 7 times
[snip]


And here is the output of 'ifconfig eth0':

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:13 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          Interrupt:9 Base address:0xd800

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Wim van der Meer