3c905b-tx not working on fresh install of FreeBSD 5.0

[Alex de Kruijff]

On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 03:58:13PM +0900, Steiger, N. Wilson, (GS-12E)(TRNG) ATG WESTPAC wrote:
> To all:
> 
> I have just installed FreeBSD 5.0 on a Pent. 200 MMX w/192 MB RAM and 3-8 GB
> HDs (SCSI-using AHA-2940U).  My NIC is a 3c905b-tx.  The motherboard is set
> to non-plug-and-play.  While booting the NIC shows link on my hub, but no
> activity (duh), but as soon as the kernel sends configuration parameters to
> the NIC it goes offline...no link lights or anything.  I know the NIC works
> fine as I was using it with Win98SE just minutes before loading FreeBSD 5.0.
> I use the NICs config prog to check all the settings and they all appear to
> be fine.  This is only my fourth install of FreeBSD so I am quite the
> novice, but I have never ran in to an issue with the NIC doing this
> before...
> 
> The NIC does state (hw-loopback) in ifconfig, but I can not find a way to
> get this changed.  I have tried to set the mediaopt setting to 100baseTX or
> even 10baseT/UTP, but neither fix the issue.  "ifconfig" sees the card fine
> before I send the IP settings to the NIC, but once I set the IP the link
> lights disappear.  The ifconfig command still shows my card, but I can't
> ping outside the box.  I can ping the IP that I set to the NIC and the local
> loopback.
> 
FreeBSD 5.x isn't labed stable yet. Since 5.0 is the first version of
the brance it still has a high change that one can run in to some bugs.
Your best change of solving this is to install another version of
FreeBSD or update (if you can).

I also experianced this with 3c905C-TX on the 4.4. I solved this by
installing 4.5.

-- 
Alex

Articles based on solutions that I use:
http://www.kruijff.org/alex/index.php?dir=docs/FreeBSD/