[9fans] 3com 3c509 PCI (B?) alternating boot link on/off problem

[Axel Belinfante <Axel.Belinfante@cs.utwente.nl>]

After I replaced an ISA 10Mbit 3com 3c509(B?) ethernet card by a PCI
one in my pcauth server, it seems that repeated (hot) booting (by ^P)
toggles the PCI card from 'on' to 'off' to 'on' to etc., as shown by the
link led on the switch at the other end of the UTP cable.
The led on the PCI card is on even when the link is down (acc. to switch).
Once I (finally) realized the alternating sequence, I did not try cold
boots to see their effect.

I had the impression an older pcdisk kernel works, but my observations
of what worked and what not might be wrong if it really was alternating,
since by accident I might just have tried the pcdisk kernel in the
working state (and the pcauth in the not-working one).

I tried going back to older kernels (built from older sources),
without much result (but the problem is that I updated the sources
so I don't know the exact relation between kernels I have and source
files versions (dates) :-(

I'm aware that the above is rather vague; if there is any particular
information I could provide to help diagnose/debug, please just ask.
(I thought of enabling debugging in the etherlink3 driver, but
 by the time I realized the alternating nature of the problem,
 and thus an 'easy' way to again have a 'working' system,
 real work started to kick in -- and I don't know exactely what I'm
 looking for -- but again, please ask for what can help to diagnose).

in case it helps, below follows output of the pci command:
(I can just look for the text on the card if that would help more)

dorknoper# pci
0.0.0:	06.00.00 8086/122d   0
0.11.0:	03.00.00 5333/883d  11 0:f4000000 67108864
0.7.0:	06.01.00 8086/122e   0
0.7.1:	01.01.80 8086/1230   0 4:0000e801 16
0.9.0:	02.00.00 10b7/5900  10 0:0000e401 32
dorknoper#

Thanks,
Axel.