Doug from the factory here with an update on the DOS driver not getting DHCP replies on some systems.
First of all, thanks for everyone’s patience and willingness to share details on the issue.
Second, we believe we have root cause. The interrupt environment in the DOS is very old. Lots of DOS components don’t like sharing interrupts. In this case, that sharing is causing the issue. On the platforms we tested with, if the LAN was on a separate IRQ from other devices, it would work fine. But if it was shared, that was the when the issue would be seen. There is a device interrupt handler that was not forwarding the interrupt to our driver when the two share the same IRQ line.
That’s all the good news. The less good news is that the solution to this needs to be in the BIOS. The driver can’t change the IRQ handler chain and if the device that eats our HW interrupt gets before us, we’re done. So the BIOS has to set the IRQs separately so everyone can play nice. We’ve been working with the OEM partner to have an updated BIOS, but things like timing and availability is up to them. Furthermore the release of the solution is up to them, they might not elect to release it on all platforms. So please, if you have this issue, consult with your HW provider, and hopefully soon you’ll have a new BIOS that makes this issue go away.
Thanks for using Intel® Ethernet, and if you have questions about this issue, I’ll keep my eye on the thread and will post answers when I can.