No worries. I was wondering what happened.
I'm kind of wondering if the subnet manager in the Cisco/Topspin box is too ancient to properly recognise your cards.
Are you able to get another Linux box up and running temporarily? If so, it would be interesting to see what happens if you turn off the subnet manager in the Cisco/Topspin box, instead running your own (OpenSM) on another box connected to the switch.
No idea if that's practical for you to try out though...