Current info: Maximum NICs, eth, token ring, VMware

Hi all,

Thanks to the input from many on this list, I've got VMware up and running
quite nicely on my Linux box. This is allowing me to set up a nice little
self-study networking lab. However, I'm running into some annoying problems.

I'm running RedHat 6.2 with kernel 2.2.14-5SMP. I've currently got:
1 Netgear FA-310TX [tulip] 10/100
3 RTL8139 generics
1 good old fashioned IBM Token Ring II adapter (ISA)
vmnet 1 & 3 (host-only VMware)

All come up and generally work, at least for a bit. I seem to start getting
various errors on the Token Ring card after it's been up for a while, and
tonight I noticed a lot of "kernel: eth3: Tx queue start entry 4 dirty
entry 0" messages in my syslog output.

I'm wondering if I've hit some limitation with Linux and networking. Is
there a limit of concurrent NICs in 2.2?

Also I noticed problems using Zebra with multicast and MTU sizes over the
token ring. Anyone a Token Ring/Linux wiz?

I think I'm OK for interrupts:

/proc/interrupts:
           CPU0       CPU1
  0:     404095     402615    IO-APIC-edge  timer
  1:       3410       3513    IO-APIC-edge  keyboard
  2:          0          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  3:         38         56    IO-APIC-edge  serial
  4:          4          0    IO-APIC-edge  serial
  6:         13         15    IO-APIC-edge  floppy
  7:        794        739    IO-APIC-edge  ibmtr
  8:      12512      10465    IO-APIC-edge  rtc
  9:       7920      10743    IO-APIC-edge  soundblaster
 11:      20551      20471   IO-APIC-level  eth0, eth1, eth2
 12:      42018      43259    IO-APIC-edge  PS/2 Mouse
 13:          1          0          XT-PIC  fpu
 14:     432521     435114    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
 15:       8257       7742    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
NMI:          0
ERR:          0

It's truly amazing stuff, but these "once in a while" problems are driving
me nuts!

Any tips/info appreciated.

Thanks,

- Bob