Perhaps somebody can help me with this strange problem:
I'm trying to set up a diskless i386 with a 3com590 PCI
ethernet card.
This card doesn't send anything when the kernel tries to mount
root. According to an ethernet analyzer,  it does not even
get the first rarp packet out.
If I use another way to mount root, I can use this interface
normally.
So my question: what is difference between the initialization
in mountroot() and the initialization by ifconfig?
(I had a look at it of course, but the only difference I found
was the call to arp_ifinit, done by epioctl.)
To make things more confusing,  a 3c509 (ISA) works in the
same situation.

best regards
Matthias Drochner