[ltp] Etherjet Mini-PCI prevents booting on T21

[Robert Kleemann]

I just bought a ethernet/modem minipci combo card to replace the lucent 
winmodem in my thinkpad T21.

The problem in a nutshell is that when the minipci card is installed the 
machine does not boot.

The new minipci card has a model number of 08K3125 and seems to 
correspond to:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_10/100_Ethernet_Mini-PCI_Adapter_with_56K_Modem 


When I boot I get normal thinkpad splash screen (IBM logo + "F1 for 
bios, F12 for boot options") then the screen goes blank and as far as I 
can tell the machine is hung.

If I press either F1 or F12 before the hang then I get a brief message:

Initializing Intel Boot Agent Version 2.6 (Build 006)

...then I get the same hang as before.  Note: the machine is not 
_totally_ hung, I can sitll use the FN keys to turn the monitor off and 
on and to turn the reading light on and off.  The power button still 
lets me shut the machine off.

The hang occurs with ac connected or not, battery connected or not, 
ethernet cable connected or not.

I suppose the number one candidate is that the new minipci card is 
defective but since I bought it mail order I want to try everything else 
before returning it.

Clearly the boot agent bios is very old.  It claims to be v2.6 and it 
seems ibm offers updates all the way to 4.0.17:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=ibm&lndocid=MIGR-4P52BH 


My thinkpad bios is up to date at v1.16

But if I can't even boot the machine with the minipci card installed 
then i can't update the bios.  The boot agent bios is in the minipci 
card not somewhere else right?

I tried removing the card, disabling as much hardware as i could find in 
the bios (serial, parallel, etc), and reinstalling the card but I 
received the same symptoms.

I'm open to any crazy ideas.

Robert.