Distribution: none (custom)
Hardware Environment: IBM Thinkpad T22
Software Environment:
Problem Description:

Hi.  I use Linux 2.6.5 as the kernel for my network boot disk (see
http://unattended.sourceforge.net/).  One of my users is complaining
that my boot disk does not work on his nVidia motherboard because I
built the kernel without ACPI support.  (Why the nVidia motherboard
requires ACPI, I have no idea.)  So I am experimenting with a kernel
in which I have enabled ACPI.

This kernel also has local APIC and IO-APIC support enabled, and APM
support disabled, if that matters.  I can send the full .config if
that would be helpful.

My problem is this.  On one of my test systems (IBM Thinkpad T22), the
network driver fails to work unless I specify "acpi=off" on the kernel
command line.  Since this is supposed to be an automated and
system-independent boot disk, I want to avoid the need to pass kernel
parameters if I can.

I get this error message while loading the 3c59x driver:

  ***WARNING*** No MII transceivers found!

Then, when my boot disk attempts to grab a DHCP lease, it fails with
messages like these:


  eth0: Command 0x5800 did not complete!  Status=0xffff
  eth0: Command 0x2804 did not complete!  Status=0xffff
  eth0: Command 0x3002 did not complete!  Status=0xffff
  eth0: Command 0x3002 did not complete!  Status=0xffff
  ...

I suppose this is not surprising given the 3c59x driver's warning
message.

All of these problems vanish if I specify "acpi=off".

I am open to suggestions for how to proceed.  Thanks!