I have a new ASUS P5M2(P)-E series motherboard.
It has 4 Marvell 88E8056 Giga PCI-E LAN Controllers that comply with PCI Express 1.0a Specs

The ports show up in 3rc5 and the lights light up to show a link. My laptop shows a link. Bu MK says no-link.
I tried hard setting the port speed,and each time I change something, I get the same result. The Laptop sees the connection but cant communicate via MAC or IP. The MK never shows the link as up, but the lights o the board light up.

any ideas? I would send a sup output file, but I cant get anything off the board.

It's probably an IRQ conflict.

so I am still struggling with this.

If I disable all the onboard ethernet ports, and put in a RB44 I get the same problem. they show but never show a connection.. even though the lights on the RB44 and on the switch light up.

If I simply take out the 3.0rc5 DOM and put in a 2.46 DOM, the unit boots up and all the RB44 ethernet ports work.

If this was an IRQ problem, wouldnt the problem exist in both versions?

here is the IRQ list when running on 2.46

IRQ OWNER
1 keyboard
2 APIC
6 ether1
8 [rtc]
10 ether2
10 ether4
11 ether3
14 IDE 1

Upgrade your BIOS (maybe it is not necessary) and disable (or enable? i am not sure now ) option Power, ACPI APIC support. It will work.

I have disabled everything I can in the BIOS, com ports, parallel ports, usb, power support, floppy
The weird thing is that is works in 2.9.46 and does not in 3.0rc5.

I will see if there is a BIOS upgrade available.

After BIOS update try to Enable/Disable just this option - ACPI APIC support.

have you checked the cable, is it crossover ??

so the problem was ACPI APIC support.
It needed to be enabled, but I had it disabled