Marvell ethernet not working in 12.04

[gvim]

I just installed 12.04 on a Toshiba Equium A200-1V0. `lshw -C network` shows the driver is installed for the Marvell ethernet device and `ifconfig` shows it is configured for my LAN:

eth0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr  00:a0:d1:8c:81:6f
            inet addr: 10.0.0.44   Bcast: 10.0.0.255   Mask: 255.255.255.0
            UP ....... etc.

However `ping 10.0.0.254` (gateway) returns:

 From 10.0.0.44 icmp_seq=1  Destination Host Unreachable

The routing table is:

Destination         Gateway          Genmask       Flags  ................  Iface
default              10.0.0.254         0.0.0.0             UG                     eth0
10.0.0.0                 *                  255.255.255.0     U                    eth0
link-local              *                    255.255.0.0      U                      eth0

The same ethernet cable attached to another machine on the same IP range connects to the gateway so the cable is fine.

Is it possible for the ethernet device to be faulty yet still show-up as configured in `ifconfig` and `lshw -C network`?

gvim