David Vrabel wrote:
> 
>     - something (PHY reset/auto negotiation?) takes 2-3 seconds and
>       appears to be done with interrupts disabled.

It was clocking the MII management interface (MDC) at 500 Hz so each PHY
register access took some 130 ms, and many registers accesses were being
done on initialization. According to the datasheet, the maximum
frequency for MDC is 2.5 MHz.  Delays have been adjusted accordingly.

David Vrabel