lost PPPoE dialup

[milesnorth]

Hello,

First time user as of 6/2/19.  Am now away from network.  This is for a home system using an older PC with 3 NICS configured as WAN, LAN, and OPT1.  Currently have no PPPoE connection to the ISP. 

Starting with my initial install, the system repeatedly tripped into an IRQ interrupt storm that knocked the ISP immediately offline.  Vmstat and dmesg seemed to indicate a USB conflict.  So with no internet and my rudimentary understanding of PCs I turned USB off in the bios.  The ISP connection then stayed on. 

Started configuring a few things like static host ips and so forth.  On Sunday evening the ISP connection was lost again.  Ended up going to the CLI to do a machine reset and redefined the 3 interfaces.  Then went to the web GUI wizard and reentered the various options.  Still no ISP connection.  LAN and OPT1 seem to work ok.  A direct dialup from a Win10 computer to the ISP works.  But when I reboot OPNsense, the WAN text line on the command interface is just blank.

Don't know how to debug this problem.  The problem could be me, the hardware, or the software - likely in that order. 

Ideas or help to look at log messages would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Kurt