Hey it worked ... so far!!!

There is an IRQ conflict and some other noise but at least ifconfig sees the network card and I can ping my little cable switch/firewall.

Thanks for all the help. I really appreciate it.

This evening I'll play with it and find out what else doesn't work. I did get XWindows up (don't know what to do with it yet) so I'll have a browser to play with. I think the sound still isn't there.

If you're interest I'll tell you how I got from college to my job sometime or answer real life career questions. Tell me how we keep in touch. Now I am off to work after a very short night.

Bill B.

Looks like you've gotten things fairly under control.

If you'd like to test out your eth0 and sound via command-line, I suggest apt-getting lynx and mp3blaster (I'm not sure they exist in Debian's tree I know these are available from Gentoo's Portage).

Thanks for the suggestions. Testing the nic card was easy enough -- Mozilla works! The sound card .... well you saw the list from lsmod, I don't think the sound drivers have been loaded.

More googling and perhaps another thread here.

Thanks again for all the help. I learned a lot.

Good fortune!!!!