[TriLUG] NIC problem

[Charles Fischer]

I am working on an embedded project where we changed from a Via 
Mini-ITX board to an Intel based Mini-ITX board.  The embedded device 
controls two USB devices and connects to a Firewire camera.  The 
images from the camera are sent over gigabit Ethernet to some control computer.

The change from Via to Intel fixed a USB bug, but created a Ethernet 
bug.  The image data is corrupted when sent over the motherboard's 
Intel 82541PI LAN chip, but if we use a Realtek RTL8169s-32 PCI board 
the data is fine.  If I limit the "send" transfer size to around 8K 
on the Intel chip, it works.  On the Realtek I can send 8MB.

I can run the program on a full blown computer for testing.  I have 
tried this on Fedora Core 4 with some of the newer kernels, and on 
Core 5 updated to kernel 2.6-17.  On all kernels the Intel LAN 
reorders the data, the Realtek LAN works.

I do not want to limit the transfer size, because it slows down the 
system.  I also like knowing why I need a work around.

Any Ideas?

Thanks
Charles Fischer