i have EXACTLY the same issue on one of Samsung's notebook. you need to UNPLUG power cord from your PC/notebook BEFORE booting into OpenBSD/NetBSD.
see here http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-bugs/2004/03/25/0005.html Bryan Brake wrote: > This annoyance started when I bought a brand-new Dell Inspiron 9300. It > comes with a Broadcom 4401 Ethernet NIC. The NIC appeared to > initialize, but when I tried to set the interface to "UP", the following > error message occurs: > > bce0: timed out when disabling ethernet mac > bce0: timed out writing pkt filter ctl > bce0: timed out writing pkt filter ctl > bce0: timed out writing pkt filter ctl > bce0: timed out writing pkt filter ctl > bce0: timed out writing pkt filter ctl > bce0: timed out writing pkt filter ctl > > I updated to the latest snapshot (15 Feb), with no luck. I stumbled > upon this workaround by accident, as I was angry... > > I posted my problem to BSDforums, > (http://www.bsdforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39110) but received no > answer, so I am posting this to the list, so that until it is fixed, > this can be used as a work around. > > My system was setup for the NIC to catch an IP via dhcp, so when I get: > bce0: no link................ > > I logged in and do a quick "ifconfig bce0" > > bce0: flags=8a43<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,ALLMULTI,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 > lladdr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx > media: Ethernet autoselect (none) > status: no carrier > inet6 xxxx::xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx%bce0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1 > > no carrier, huh? Well, I just used this nic and cable to access my home > network on windows XP, so it's not a hardware issue, or a cable issue.
