[Soekris] Continued ethernet cable length issues

[Matthew S. Hallacy]

I've got a few 4511's with the "short" ethernet cable problem, unfortunately
they sit in an enclosure about 3 inches away from the HP ProCurve they 
plug into (3 different locations, 3 different switches). One has been happy
with the ~20 foot cable I've bundled up next to it, one of the others keeps
dying even with a 50' cable bundled up next to it. I am using the 'fixed'
drivers that are supposed to fix the problem but they don't appear to be
working except on the third system.. 

I've resorted to turning on spanning tree on the system having problems
and plugging in another 50' piece of cable into the same switch, they seem
to bounce back and forth losing and regaining the ability to receive. I've
tried setting them to 10mbit with no positive results.

Any ideas? In the future I need some of these to netboot, which means an
OS level fix isn't going to help. I'd also like to get rid of the excess
cabling. I'm willing to tie a resistor in there somewhere if absolutely
necessary.

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Matthew S. Hallacy                            FUBAR, LART, BOFH Certified
http://www.poptix.net                           GPG public key 0x01938203