bizar problem with a Dell latitude D600's onboard nic

[Philip Keuleers]

Hi,

I'm looking for some help with a problem I've been having with a Dell 
D600 with a FreeBSD 5.2.1 install. A while ago I started getting network 
timeouts. In my message logs I found entries like this:

Oct 10 14:35:04 loki kernel: bge0: PHY read timed out
Oct 10 14:35:04 loki last message repeated 2 times
Oct 10 14:35:09 loki kernel: bge0: watchdog timeout -- resetting
Oct 10 14:35:09 loki kernel: bge0: PHY read timed out
Oct 10 14:35:09 loki kernel: bge0: PHY read timed out
Oct 10 14:35:09 loki kernel: bge0: RX CPU self-diagnostics failed!
Oct 10 14:35:09 loki kernel: bge0: flow-through queue init failed
Oct 10 14:35:09 loki kernel: bge0: initialization failure
Oct 10 14:35:09 loki kernel: bge0: PHY read timed out
Oct 10 14:35:14 loki last message repeated 5 times
Oct 10 14:35:15 loki su: cz2nhc to root on /dev/ttyv0
Oct 10 14:35:19 loki kernel: bge0: PHY read timed out
Oct 10 14:35:29 loki last message repeated 7 times
Oct 10 14:35:29 loki kernel: bge0: RX CPU self-diagnostics failed!
Oct 10 14:35:30 loki kernel: bge0: flow-through queue init failed
Oct 10 14:35:30 loki kernel: bge0: initialization failure
Oct 10 14:35:30 loki kernel: bge0: PHY read timed out
Oct 10 14:36:00 loki last message repeated 20 times

Only a reboot managed to get the onboard nic back in working order 
again. I suspected hardware problems, called Dell support who couldn't 
help me unless I had win XP installed. So I switched disks with a 
colleage and lo and behold my bsd-disk in his laptop: no problem, his 
disk in my laptop: no problem... Not telling Dell the whole story I 
managed to convince them my disk in someone elses laptop worked fine 
thus it must be hardware related. They replaced the systemboard and the 
laptop worked fine for about a week or two and the same problem came 
back... slowly increasing in frequency. At first it would be every few 
days (I could live with that) but after a while it was every few hours 
(no way I could live with that). Even worse, at one point the nic 
wouldn't even show up in dmesg as if it wasn't there.
Called Dell again... same blabla.. no XP no help. They insisted I 
upgrade my bios ... so I did and everything worked again... for a day 
and a half... the nic disappeared again. Tried both a linux and a XP 
live cd .. none see the nic. In my messages file I get

Oct 14 18:11:02 loki kernel: pccard1: Card has no functions!
Oct 14 18:11:02 loki kernel: cbb1: PC Card card activation failed

Does anyone have a bright idea of what is happening here? It looks like 
a hardware issue to me but since the systemboard has already been 
replaced I'll need some good arguments to convince the Dell boys it's 
not a FreeBSD issue. Or could it be ?
I'll gladly post any logs or output that could help ... just ask :-)

In working order the nic is listed in a scanpci as

pci bus 0x0002 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x14e4 device 0x165d
Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5705M Gigabit Ethernet

pci bus 0x0002 cardnum 0x01 function 0x00: vendor 0x1217 device 0x7113
O2 Micro, Inc. Device unknown

pci bus 0x0002 cardnum 0x01 function 0x01: vendor 0x1217 device 0x7113
O2 Micro, Inc. Device unknown

Thanx in advance for your help

Greetz,
Philip


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