As suggested by dsl, I have connected a PC directly to the eth port of the 3C120 dev board. Unfortunately, the PHYs negociated both 1000FD, and I haven't been able to modify this settings. 'mii-tool' on the PC side was changing its settings but the board LEDs were still indicating 1000/FD.
Whatever the settings, Wireshark sees nothing coming from the dev_board.
I have tried the Wiki design we can find here (
http://www.alterawiki.com/uploads/f/f6/20110211_nios2_linux_3c120_125mhz_10.1sp1.tgz) with a very recent Linux kernel, then with my own design, then I have tried to set bit 1 & 7 of the Marvel 88E1111 register 20 to add a 2ns delay on the TX and RX clocks. I get always the same results : it doesn't work directly connected or behind a 100Mbps switch, and if connected behind a simple 10 HUB, Tx works nice and Rx are received with errors (according to the ifInErrors MAC counter), although Wireshark sees _no error_.
I don't know what to do next : the only design/software which works on this board is the Simple Socket Server with nommu version of the Wiki design.
I know that lots of guys are using ATSE with Linux, but I wonder if anyone as really succeeded with Linux on this board where only RGMII is possible...