Dear All,

I'm experiencing _serious_ problems with my Ethernet network.

I have been using this SMC 21041 card for .. a long time without problems.
Now my network is 99% unusable.  I have replaced all cabling, disconnected
all the systems I possibly can, no help.  I also replaced an Ethernet card
on another machine which I first thought was the source of problems.

This is what happens:

At one moment, everything works just fine.  Then, suddenly:

ping: sendto: No buffer space available
ping: sendto: No buffer space available
ping: sendto: No buffer space available
ping: sendto: No buffer space available
64 bytes from 212.246.39.150: icmp_seq=119 ttl=255 time=34774.558 ms
64 bytes from 212.246.39.150: icmp_seq=120 ttl=255 time=33776.082 ms
64 bytes from 212.246.39.150: icmp_seq=121 ttl=255 time=32778.039 ms
64 bytes from 212.246.39.150: icmp_seq=122 ttl=255 time=31780.653 ms
64 bytes from 212.246.39.150: icmp_seq=123 ttl=255 time=30781.911 ms
64 bytes from 212.246.39.150: icmp_seq=124 ttl=255 time=29783.725 ms
64 bytes from 212.246.39.150: icmp_seq=125 ttl=255 time=28784.580 ms

If I watch the LEDs on my hub, I can see _no_ packets coming out of
the 21041 card.  At the same time, the other two machines on the
same net can ping each other just fine.  It's only this 21041 card
which seems to die completely.  However, if it decides to come back
alive in time, no ping packets get lost.  They just pile up and then
get out in one burst, it seems.

It also seems that one specific NetBSD machine triggers the problem.
I replaced the Ethernet card on it, I replaced the cabling, the problem
remained the same.

Has anyone had problems like this with 21041?  Could it be a problem
in the NetBSD driver?  Or is my 21041 just dying?

I happen to live in a town where _no_ computer store has any reasonable
networking cards in store.  Argh.  All I could find was an ISA d-link
card (I already have one of those and I never could make it work with
NetBSD).

Any ideas at all?

Thanks,

  -jm (always in trouble..)