Hey, I am still relatively a newb when it comes to hardware. I have been slaving over my new board with the vt8251 chipset for the last couple weeks. The newest kernel supports the southbridge finally and I am able to get PATA drives detected (SATA is another issue). I have been trying to use OpenSuSE's 10.1-Factory (pre-Beta 1) build in order to get the latest driver support. My largest issue currently is getting network card to work. The Rhine-II driver is loaded but will not pick up an IP from my router (which lists the MAC-Addy in the client table). Even with a statically assigned IP, I cannot get any communication between it and my router (other systems are running well through it).

This is in the Kernel Messages:
eth0:VIA Rhine II at 0x1d00, 00:13:d4:cc:10:73, IRQ 11.
eth0: MII PHY found at address 1, status 0x786d advertising 01e1 Link 41e1.

My Googling isn't proving much success and I would like to know how other people were able to get this going.

BTW I have also tried the forcedeth driver (as was suggested in a few places) without success. I am hoping it is something simple which I am/am not doing. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Charles

Did yast recognize it at the installation?

If you set your router as DHCP and configure Suse also for DHCP then if you restart and press ESC you can see if suse can get a connection with the router. If it cannot, it will give a message in red and also the time server (if activated) is giving a red failed.

If you get an error then there is no connection.
From there on I would start at the basis. Is your connection ok?
Kabling ok ? Nic is connected ok ? If onboard Nic, is it activated in the bios?

Do you have another nic (preferable a cheap realtec or so, they almost always function) try to start up with that nic (disable the onboard nic or remove it). Does this function ?
Is it an onboard nic? Does it need drivers (like Nvidia...)

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