[Soekris] soekris 4801 problem

[dfeustel@mindspring.com]

> I have used a number of soekris devices over the past 3 years, both 4501 
> and 4801 devices. Recently I have experienced a problem with a net4801 
> that I cannot understand.
> 
> This soekris had not been in use and I wanted to set it up with OpenBSD 
> 4.0. I tried with both a SanDisk 1GB CF and a Lexar 512MB CF. Each 
> system allowed the installation, but as it sat running for 10-15 
> minutes, it would simply freeze up.
> 
> I thought it might be due to a BIOS issue, so upgraded the BIOS to the 
> most recent, 1.28, and am now experiencing the problem during the 
> installation. The symptoms are odd: it seems like everything is working 
> fine and then the keyboard stops being responsive and I cannot continue 
> using the device until I repower it.
> 
> Defective? Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks.

I have been running OpenBSD for several years on i386 hardware with no
problems whatsoever. However, since I upgraded to 4.0 on my amd64
K9N neo motherboard with nfe0 ethernet, I have been having persistent
problems with getting email. To wit: the email access stalls before
any data is transferred. My workaround is to abort the command and
retry. I have had to do this as many as 4 times to get the email to
be transferred. I mention this because I have seen reports on the
misc* mailing list of problems with the ne driver.
I never had any problems running 3.9, so I think the driver has been
tweaked and a bug introduced. One other thing I have noticed is that,
upon terminating kde sessions and dropping back to console mode,
I ocasionally see 1 or 2 error messages in blue about console
command errors. But I have been seeing those messages while running
3.8, 3.9, and now 4.0 on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of OpenBSD.
They have never disabled my system though.

nfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

Dave Feustel