i just installed linux on a pentium 2 for my friend, and the install went fine aside from issues with the graphics card (for another thread), and the NIC. being geniuses, we neglected to make sure there was an ethernet card in the computer BEFORE installing. so we installed, got a nice little console running, and then i left. this morning my friend stuck in a 3com etherlink III 1994, card type is 3c509b-tp0. during boot it said detecting new hardware, then said setting up network connections, then continued booting. my friend tried to use lynx to test the connection, and it failed. the router is set up correctly, so we believe that linux has not actually found the card.

it's running mandrake 8.0. i believe modprobe has some connection to the solution, but i can't even find out which module to load for this card. help?