>>> [...weird net problem...]
>> [...turn of SQE, aka heartbeat...]
> It's a good theory, but unfortunately one of the first things I
> checked.  The SQE feature is jumpered to OFF on both my AUI->UTP
> transceivers.  The problem persists.  All it takes is either one or
> both Suns to be connected to my LAN.

Does it matter whether they're turned on?  Does it matter whether
they're booted?  What if they've booted but are currently halted?  What
if they've booted but are sitting at the ddb (or ROM) prompt?

> The common denominator is that they're both running NetBSD, and both
> using ethernet transceivers.

Well, it's also something about them or something else in your setup,
'cause I've got a bunch of NetBSD boxen, many of them Suns with AUI
Ethernet, and frequently run them on transceivers with no problem.  So
unfortunately it's not "NetBSD on a Sun using an AUI<->10baseT
transceiver".

> A simple test I've done is connect either or both Suns to the LAN,
> and do a "ping -s 1024 foo", from one local machine to another local
> machine.  It doesn't matter if one of these machines is one of the
> Suns in question.  I immediately see collisions, and missed echo
> replies.  Tcpdump shows NOTHING while the collisions are happening,
> simply echo requests with no replies.  No other traffic.

Is that true regardless of where you run tcpdump (pinger, pingee, Sun,
non-Sun third-party machine)?

Does it occur for non-ping traffic?

Do *any* pings get answered?

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
		     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B