Weird bonding driver and tulip quad-card interaction on 2.4.17

[Peter C. Norton]

I've installed 2.4.17 on a 2-cpu p2 333 system and am getting some kind of
corruption in the ifconfig output.

I'm running debian, mostly testing, some unstable (most of the unstable is
gnome-related, though).  The net-tools package version is 1.60-4, and
netbase package is version 4.07.

I see the following when I test:

[spacey@obelisk mp3]$ sudo /sbin/modprobe bonding iimon=100
Warning: /lib/modules/2.4.17/kernel/drivers/net/bonding.o parameter max_bonds has max < min!
[spacey@obelisk mp3]$ sudo /sbin/modprobe tulip
[spacey@obelisk mp3]$ /sbin/lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
bonding                11180   0 (unused)
[...]
tulip                  37568   0 (unused)
[...]
[spacey@obelisk bonding]$ sudo ifconfig bond0 10.0.3.20 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.3.255
[spacey@obelisk bonding]$ sudo route add -net 10.0.3.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 10.0.3.20
[spacey@obelisk bonding]$ /sbin/ifconfig bond0
bond0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00  
          inet addr:10.0.3.20  Bcast:10.0.3.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
	  UP BROADCAST RUNNING MASTER MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
	  RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
	  TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
	  RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

[spacey@obelisk bonding]$ /sbin/ifconfig eth1
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:80:C8:B9:43:89  
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
	  RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
	  TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
	  collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
	  RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:18 Base address:0x2000 

and the same for eth[2-4] with their MAC address incrementing by 1.

Now, when bonding the interfaces using the ifenslave included with the
kernel in linux/Documentation/networking/ifenslave.c:

[spacey@obelisk bonding]$ gcc -I /usr/src/linux-2.4.17/include -o /tmp/ifenslave  /usr/src/linux-2.4.17/Documentation/networking/ifenslave.c 
[spacey@obelisk bonding]$ sudo /tmp/ifenslave bond0 eth1 eth2 eth3 eth4

OK, now watch this:
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:80:C8:B9:43:89
Media:U<89><E5><83><EC
<8B>f<83>8^Du^N<83><C4><F4><83><C0>^BP<E8><E1><FE><FF><FF><EB> <83><C4><FC>j@
<83><C4><F4>h>>^<E8><DD><8C><FF><FF><83><C4>^PPh i^<E8>7
          inet addr:10.0.3.20  Bcast:10.0.3.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
	  UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING SLAVE  MTU:1500  Metric:1
	  RX packets:1 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
	  TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 
	  RX bytes:60 (60.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
	  Interrupt:18 Base address:0x2000 

eth[1-4] are all the same - something in the media field is being clobbered
or otherwise messed up.  The same thing, with the same model/make of quad
nic, the same driver and the same kernel, though slightly different build
options does work on an alpha.

I've mentioned this on the bonding list, but nothing has turned up.  Can
anyone suggest what might be doing this, and what I should be looking at to
figure out a fix?

If relevant .configs would help, let me know and I'll send them along.

TIA,
-Peter

-- 
The 5 year plan:
In five years we'll make up another plan.
Or just re-use this one.