i recently had a problem installing my network card and i thought others might have the same problem. since i couldn't find very much information about the problem, i decided to post how i fixed it.

I had Fedora core 3 running on my computer just fine. but, i decided that i wanted a better way to upgrade the software on my computer gentoo's emerge looked exactly like what i was looking for so i gave it a shot.

i went through the installation in the installationg handbook: (it won't let me type urls so) www dot gentoo dot org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1. the live cd kernel didn't detect my network card on boot. but, when i loaded the module everything went fine. everything else went great: compiling, etc.

but when i rebooted into my newly installed command-line system, my 3c509 didn't work. i tried recompiling the kernel with different drivers, drivers in modules, drivers in kernel. nothing worked. then i read some post that i can't find anymore that said it might be a problem with the 3c509's plug-and-play settings.

so, then i went looking for the configuration utility. but, i couldn't find it anywhere. i looked on the 3com website. but, they didn't have anything. my computer is quite old. so, who knows where my disks are. i finally found the 3c5x9cfg.exe utility on (it won't let me type urls so) www dot driverguide dot com. they make you give them your email address to join their website. but, i could not find the utility anywhere else.

then, i created a dos bootdisk, because the utility won't run on linux. after that i rebooted and ran the utility. i played around with it for a little bit. after that, i turned off the plug-and-play feature of the NIC. after that, make sure that you select an IRQ that isn't used by some other device on your computer (it will warn you if you try to select one). then i rebooted and it worked just fine.

i should say that if you dual boot to windows, as well as linux, there some things that you have to do to get your card working again in windows. but, i'm sure it's nothing too major.

good luck,
mike

well what actually happens when you run "modprobe 3c509" that loads without error, see if there's anythign else in dmesg. if that's ok then it should be fine. just edit /etc/conf.d/net and add the ip details there and start the intercface (/etc/init.d/net.eth0 start)

well what actually happens when you run "modprobe 3c509" that loads without error, see if there's anythign else in dmesg. if that's ok then it should be fine. just edit /etc/conf.d/net and add the ip details there and start the intercface (/etc/init.d/net.eth0 start)

when i ran modprobe 3c509 it loaded just fine (ifconfig eth0 showed the NIC). but, the DHCP server mysteriously would not connect. when i did all the things just like in the gentoo handbook. all the config files seemed to be the same. that's why it was so hard to fix. it was an error with the plug and play settings of the NIC. another solution might be to play with the PCI hotplug. but, that didn't work for me either.

i should say that i fixed the error. but, i thought someone might save a few hours (or days) with their install.


mike