[SunHELP] odd system problems (ethernet not working and 'bus fault')

[Solaris Neophyte]

I'm getting odd problems with my Ultra10's (tatung tsw-3500, so technically a
clone/compatible system) integrated ethernet port. 

It seems that the unit works intermittantly. When I disconnected the patch
cable and then reconnected it the light didn't come back on. I've tried
swapping the patch cable to see if it was a faulty cable, but I still get the
same problems. 

When I run 'ifconfig hme0' the it says the unit is up. I've tried bringing it
to a down state and then an up state again, but that doesn't work. 

Any ideas on this one? Is it hardware failure or is it a setting in Solaris 8
that requires the port to be activated or requires something to happen before
the port becomes active? 

The problem is alot worse that I thought. I ran the 'test net' after I did the
'stop a' thing and the system worked once, but the second time it froze. No
matter what i tried I couldn't get the system out of a frozen state so I had to
cycle the power. 

I thought lemme check the entire system to see what's going on, so I did a
"test scsi" which did nothing for a few seconds and then I was flooded with a
"bus fault" message. The system seemed to keep on generating this message and
it was stuck in this loop. Again, I had to cycle the power to get a functioning
system. 

While I am writing this, I tried this one more time. After I cycled the power
the link light blinked on on my switch. I ran the 'test net' and everything
seemed to check out. When I tried to run it again, the loopback test succeeded
but the transceiver test failed with a return code = -1. 

I've tried the 'test scsi' which doesn't seem to give any errors right now. 

I'm completely lost here. I dunno what I should do. I'm thinking that the
hardware is probably faulty which means the guy I bought it from ripped me off.


observation maybe this isn't entirely true, but i've noticed, that when I do a
'stop a' right after I boot the system I can run the test w/o an error or
lockup (although, I seem to only be able to run 'test net' once, after that I
get an error or the system freezes), BUT after the system does the filesystem
cleanup (from the power off) and brings the integrated nic up, i get error
messages. 

Does something happen that results in these errors? If someone could explain
the bootup workings of an Ultra10 i'd really appreciate it.
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