Broken "dmfe" network driver in 2.6.9/10

[toyz]

[who do I tell, so the kernel can be better? I have worked around the problem with realtek cards]

I've been running 2.6.9-r14 gentoo sparc sources. I just purchased some network cards in hopes of making a 4 NIC router. 1 Happy Meal and 3 Davicom based cards that use the "dmfe" network driver.

Behavior: Everything seems to work while ifconfig'ing then I ping out to another machine on the card and it doesn't see it. Pinging in from the other machine doesn't work either.

eth1 (192.168.2.1/255.255.255.0)
Ultra 5
|
|
eth0 (192.168.2.2/255.255.255.0)
Notebook

They do not communicate with a switch. They do not communicate with a crossover cable. NO arp is happening. Then on the Ultra 5, I run "tcpdump -i eth1" and pings start working and everything works fine then. It's like it has to be put in permiscuous mode or something. This is reproducaeble.

I wondered if the 2.4.28 kernel had the same problem, it doesn't... It works fine. I do not have to do a tcpdump to get arp requests working.

I don't know if this is a Sparc specific problem... But the dmfe.c code is the same in the vanilla 2.6.10 source. I'm using realtek 8139too cards now... Just want to help solve the problem for others.