Okay, I just installed Gobo on my system, and I was previously using Red Hat 9. RH didn't have a problem with the NIC, it detected it, I could use it, no worries. I've now installed GoboLinux 010 on my box and it works great except I can't get the nic to work. It tells me that the nic isn't installed. Fair enough, so I try to do a "modprobe 3c509.o" and I get back

Note: /etc/modules.conf is more recent than /System/Kernel/Modules/2.4.23-Gobo/modules.dep
modprobe: Can't locate 3c509.o

Now I'm completely lost because Gobo uses a different file structure than I've seen before. Can anyone please, please god help me?

Unless /System/Kernel/Modules/ is a symlink to /lib/modules, or vice versa, this file structure violates standards. I'd check on that, and if they don't maintain standard compliance I would ditch the distro because it's a good sign the distro maintainers don't care about standard compliance (which makes the system a bitch to maintain).

If you find there are symlinks making the filesystem structure compliant, then proceed to go in the modules directory and run depmod -a. It sounds awfully unlikely they wouldn't give you a 3c509 module matching your kernel! Hopefully that's all it'll take to work.

This is what was released to kuro5hin.org from the developers pertaining to the symlinks.

For each category of files, there is a directory under /System/Links grouping files from each application as symbolic links: Executables, Libraries, Headers, Shared and Manuals. For compatibility, each "legacy" directory is a link to a corresponding category. Therefore, /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin (and so on) are all symlinks to /System/Links/Executables. Environment variables are also simplified: export PATH=/System/Links/Executables is enough.

I tried the depmod -a in both /lib/modules and /System/Kernel/Modules/, and it didn't come up with an error message, but it still doesn't detect my nic. There is an error message now during boot up, but it fly's by so quick that I can't read it.

OK. I take back my earlier complaint about the filesystem structure.

Poke around in the modules directory for net/3c509.o

If it's not there, consider compiling it yourself.

As long as you have 2.4.23 kernel source, you can do "make xconfig" and select your card type as a module. This would enable you to get the module working without even rebooting.

Okay, I tried that, and a few other things that my roommate suggested, and nothing worked. So I went out and picked up a new nic. Low and behold, works like a charm. Stupid ISA card. Thanks man.