Date:        Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:39:12 -0700 (MST)
    From:        Tim Rightnour <root@garbled.net>
    Message-ID:  <XFMail.981217103912.root@garbled.net>

  | The sparc is nice and slow, but the pentium sending it data is blasting ... 
  | Something is bound to loose.

That should result in lost packets (which the lance counts as a "miss" and
the kernel does no more than count).   That's normal (not good, but normal).

A lance overflow means that the lance received the packet OK, and has a buffer
in which to store it, but the CPU didn't grant it enough bus cycles to
actually get the incoming packet from the lance into ram.    That is decidely
not good.

I'd suggest just deleting the message - at the very least that will avoid
the messages contributing to further problems (kernel printfs are to be
avoided where possible, which is why they generally only indicate serious 
problems).

If this doesn't make things "good enough" it might be worth looking for
one of the buffered ethernet sbus cards, and seeing if that will work better.

kre

ps: the message is in sys/dev/ic/am7990.c