Just got a new computer with an Asus A7V8X motherboard. Great board, with one problem: The on-board Broadcom BCM4401 10/100 ethernet controller isn't detected by my fresh install of RedHat 8.0. I've tried going to the Network Config and creating it, but I don't know how to determine the IRQ, MEM, DMA, and all that other stuff. I'm also not sure which driver I would use even if I did.
Is there anyone with any experience/ideas on getting this running so I can get online? Your help is greatly appreciated.
Here's the run-down of my system:
Asus A7V8X
Athlon XP 2200+
Broadcom BCM4401 10/100 NIC on board
Geforce4 MX440 8X AGP
Maxtor 60GB HD
Need anything else?

Excellent system, (Goes green with envy)

try allocating irq's in the bios
that should enable you to do manual config.
I wonder if the broadcom card is maybe a realtek rebadge as these boards normally have realtek chips installed.

Just a thought

Good Luck
BOFH1971

This just doesn't happen. You might have a network card that geek+dog hasn't had a chance to hack out a driver for at all just yet. What does Asus say, Linux drivers-wise, or broadcom?

Cheers,

Finegan

Hmmmm good point. Asus has nothing to say on Linux drivers for any of the on-board stuff (firewire, usb, sound, etc.), but the ethernet is the only one that wasn't picked up and configured automatically. Broadcom has nothing to say either, unfortuantely. Heck, I couldn't even find anything on their site that connected them to the controller at all. I did find that Broadcom provides chips for 3Com's gigabit ethernet controllers though. Maybe a 3Com driver would work...Does anyone else out there have an A7V8X motherboard?

broadcom - it think it uses a driver called 'tg3' something.

I grabbed the Broadcom documentation for the 440X series, and it makes no mention of Linux whatsoever. I did some research on the Broadcom Tigon3 (tg3) driver and discovered its for their gigabit controller, and not the 10/100. How can I find out if a driver is currently being written, and if it is, when it will be available, where I can get it, and if there's anything I can do to help? Thanks for everyone's help.

Regards,
Sr. Pedo

This perked my interest too, so I went looking at the broadcom site also. All their 440x gear is for home use, with Home PNA and modems thrown in on the same card, which makes me think they're just rebranding chipsets. I should have mentioned this earlier, but to get the ident right off the card:

/sbin/lspci -v

If that says something other than broadcom, you can feed that info into google and probably get the right module.

Otherwise, if you want to bang on some C, become a driver maintainer, check out the Linux Kernel Mailing List, kernel.org should have a link, I usually just poke through it by wandering into one of the billions of mirrors of the archive on el google again.

Cheers,

Finegan

Here's the output from lspci -v regarding the ethernet controller:

00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device 4401 (rev 01)
Subsystem: Asustek Computer, Inc.: Unknown device 80a8
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 32, IRQ 5
Memory at e4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
Expansion ROM at e7ef0000 [disabled] [size=16K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

So it looks like we have ourselves a new (driverless) controller here. Maybe I will try my hand at some C. All I know is Fortran and BASIC right now (I know, I know). If anyone can give me a push in the right direction I'd be much obliged. I'm probably biting off more than I can chew, but hey, isn't that what it's all about?

You know, sometimes I amaze myself with how dumb I can be. Looking on the CD that came with the motherboard, I find a folder called D:\Drivers\LAN\4401\Linux and to my amazement...there's a tar file in there with release notes on what to do with it. Sorry to trouble you all...but thanks so much for all your help. If there's any questions around here I can answer, I can guarantee I'll be on it.

SenorPedo,

Did you get this to work? Any special steps to complete the driver install?

j.

No special steps at all. The tarred driver was included on the motherboard cd and with the standard ./configure, make, make install procedure. If you need a copy of the driver with release notes, I'd be happy to email it to you.

hey... i have the same board here are my specs just to let ya know...
Asus A7V8X Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ 2.0Ghz with 3D Now 266FSB .13 Micron
Corsair XMS 512MB DDR PC2700 RAM w/Metal Heatsink
Western Digital Caviar 80GB 7200 RPM HDD
AOpen Geoforce 4 Ti4200 w/128MB DDR RAM 8x
Plextor 40x12x40x CD-R Drive
Mitsumi 3.5" Floppy Drive
Chieftec SOHO Fileserver Case w/ Turbolink 430 Watt Power Supply
Altec Lansing 641 4.1 Speakers with Sub 400 Watt RMS
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0
Microsoft Internet Keybaord
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional SP3/Redhat Linux 8.0

can i have those drivers because i just installed and i have the same problem... for some reason my cd does have that folder...
xUltra@attbi.com = my e-mail. thanks!

There are drivers on the cd for the Gigabit Ethernet Controller, the BCM5702, but not the BCM4401... it seems to be I got older CD, but then again I checked on Asus' website and they only have the drivers for the BCM5702 as well. If you could e-mail them over to me asap I would really appreciate it.

The ingredients ....
* ASUS A7V8X motherboard
* Red Hat 8.0
* (onboard) Broadcom 4400 LAN
* and a Linux novice

As others have found, Red Hat 8.0 (binaries) does not automatically detect the onboard Broadcom 4400 chipset .

I am not successful in installing this myself - perhaps you can suggest where I am going wrong?

The ASUS "VIA KT400 support CD, Rev 37.02" contains intructions and a tar.gz file in the /drivers/LAN/4401/linux directory. The detailed instructions call for either an RPM installation (but there are no RPM files on the CD) or a TAR build.

This is what I am doing:

i. TAR the files to \root\lan_install (as instructed)

ii. cd to the new \SRC directory where the extracted files are

iii. type "make" and watch the screen scroll with pages and pages of errors ("dereferencing to pointer of incomplete type" etc ...)

iv. shake my head in confusion. All of the neccesary *.h and *.c files , and Makefile are here. What simple thing am I doing wrong?

Thank you.



derek_eder@yahoo.com

Maybe you need to run ./configure before you run make?