OK, here's the problem. I can't connect to the internet. My network card is a little iffy but my wireless card should work fine when I install ipw2200. So I tried "emerge ipw2200" and it went through a few packages but stopped at hotplug. So I ran "emerge -pv ipw2200" and it tells me I need these programs:

sys-apps/hotplug-20040923
net-wireless/ipw2200-firmware-2.2
net-wireless/ipw2200-1.0.1

It seems that hotplug is the only package missing but i downloaded all 3 anyway on my other computer. The hotplug package is named "hotplug-2004_09_32.tar.gz" I copied this package to the appropriate location in my portage directory but it still wouldn't work.

My question is how can I emerge hotplug so I can continue on with installing ipw2200? Also, if someone can help me with my network card, I would appreciate that too. It's a Marvell Technologies Fast Ethernet card. It's supposed to use the sk98lin driver but that doesn't work. I also read that it can use the skge driver but that doesn't work either. Thanks in advance.

any chance of a little more detail where you say "it still wouldn't work" ??? you seem to have the right file there...

Well, hotplug-2004_09_23.tar.gz is in the appropriate folder but when I run emerge ipw2200, it still can't find the hotplug package. Then I tried to emerge the hotplug tar.gz file but it told me there was no ebuild to satisfy it.

Go download the universal Gentoo CD and setup emerge to look there for packages and install hotplug from there. It may not have your wireless driver on the CD (it might though) but it's a start

You said you put them in the appropriate location. I understand that emerge downloads the files to "/etc/portage/distfiles" and then extracts the archive and compiles. Did you put the *.tar.gzfiles into this location and them perform emerge on them again and it should work.

Thanks, it worked. Portage on my computer downloads them to "/usr/portage/distfiles" so I copied it there and it worked. All I have to do is connect my computer to my network.