We installed Netbsd 1.6_BETA4 on a Dell Inspiron 7500 with
a Xircom RBEM56G-100 carbus nic/serial card.

The floppy-based installed connected via DHCP fineduring the install
and saved the config as one would expect. However, on bootup, dhclient
cannot make use of the interface unless the if.config.tlp0 file
includes a client ip address in it.

For example, if ifconfig.tlp0 just has the ip address
dhclient can connect, but if it contains one of the following:
up
media select autoselect
up media select autoselect
etc. (about anything without the ip address)

then it can't configure the interface on bootup. The interface
works fine with a static ip configuration, and if the interface
is brought up with the static ip and then the ifconfig.tlp0 file
is changed to just 'up' and the network and dhclient are restarted
(in correct order), all is fine.

So it appears that dhclient can't configure the tlp0 interface
unless the ifconfig.tlp0 file contains an ip address.

I tried all manner of dhclient config files and it didn't appear
to affect anything. Seems to be a problem with the ifconfig file,
the interface and dhclient. I also tried the exact same configurations
on a desktop machine with a 3COM 3c905B-TX and it does everything
correctly, as one would expect.

Any idea what is wrong with this carbus nic and dhclient or what
is different from the installer dhcp configuration?

Thanks