I've got a 10baseT hub, so that's not likely to be the problem, although I've got an old switch I can test if I want.

I was re-examining the dmesg output, and there are two errors for each le port, one as I gave it, and the other indicating a transceiver problem.

When the machine is up the hub indicates activity on that cable, and the sys-unconfig seems to detect the cable properly, as the time I had two dead cables in (oops) it wouldn't configure the NIS at all.

I know the cable I've got in there is good, as I swapped it from my current system. I haven't tried le1 yet on the Sparc yet.