ethernet not working

I have tried many different ways in troubleshooting this issue such as swapping cat 5 cables, hub ports, and ip addresses but yet no progress.  The setup is a hub with MC board plugged in to one port, an xp machine on another hub port, and an Ubuntu 7.10 on another port.  The ubuntu is acting as the dhcp server.  I can ping from ubuntu to xp and vice versa.  I tried both dhcp and static ip address assignment to the MC board and it is not ping-able.  Issuing a command /network/address  via mchelper on xp returns no address, the /network/dhcp command returns /network/dhcp instead of the status 1 or 0.

Two indicators that one can check for proper ethernet operations assuming the hub, dhcp server are in functioning order:

1.  /system/task-report   should list  lwIP and ETH_INT process  running.   -- on mine I am missing  ETH_INT but instead gets replaced by the Make process, which indicates the ethernet is non-functional.

2.  ethernet led indicators, if the green light is blinking (every 5-6 secs) right after erasing the firmware ( unplug usb port then replugged) and after successful reloading of the firmware, the board is okay.  On my non-functional ethernet board, the green led stays lit after erasing the firmware and completely off when the firmware has loaded.  NO ethernet LED lit when firmware has loaded means one can not use the ethernet port. Firmware can be running okay but yet no ethernet.

Anyone has suggestion in recovering this flashing ethernet green led when the board is erased?  Is there anyone at MakeThings that know more about this to fix this problem?  Or perhaps have a technique to reload a factory fresh settings?  Liam please dont tell me that erasing the firmware effectively resets to factory defaults because they are not factory defaults. For example, If I set my own name and serial number,  erasing the firmware still reads these name and serial numbers and certainly these are not factory settings.  I am ranting perhaps, but i spent a week already just to get things started, far too much time to do this setup.

The fact the ETH_INT task is not running indicates that the Ethernet PHY has not sensed a good connection through the network connector. Until that starts up (which will happen once the PHY returns successfully), your network interface won't work. I have not, in our correspondence, claimed that erasing the firmware resets factory settings. Just the opposite - settings are stored in EEPROM, which is quite separate from the mechanism that loads firmware onto the board. I would recommend trying a different hub, switch or router if you have one - hopefully that will make the Ethernet connection a little happier.