Hello,

I have a Leadtek 7350K DA motherboard with an AMD 2000+
There is one Realtek 8139 included on the motherboard.
128 Mb / 40 Go.

This network device is detected fine, but no way to make it work.
Syslog displays something like "watchdog time out" and i can't figure what's happening there. Motherboard is a new one.

Tried with another Realtek device added in a PCI slot, the problem remains the same. The most strange is that this kind of devices (Fast ethernet) are really bad managed by Linux and especially Mandrake.
I tried too the "ne" module but no way

The Mandrake's help forum is so chaotic that i definitely won't use it so if someone have idea about my problem...

The NE2000 driver is only for the PCI NE2000 clones (RealTek 8019 and 8029). For the onboard RTL8129/8139 chips you need the module named rtl8139.c

You don't specify which chipset your pci nic uses (when you post back that would be helpful).

For more information, see
http://www.scyld.com/network/rtl8139.html

To troubleshoot this problem, open a terminal as root:
1. Check to see if the correct module is loaded by typing:
lsmod

2. To see how linux is detecting your NIC try:
lspci -v

3. If the response to 1 (above) reports the rtl8139.c, try modprobe rtl8139.c

4. If you get no error message, type:
ifconfig -a (this should display all of your active network interfaces whether configured or not)

5. Report back the results of 1 through 4 (above) for more help (again, please remember to give us the PCI NIC chipset).

Yes i'm sorry forgot the involved chipset, it seems to be SIS chipset. I've been looking informations about this on sis.com.tw and they mention what you explained, now the big problem is that realtek.c is non existant on my disk or maybe i wasn't able to find it.

The only things that are approaching this module are built in this way "realtek.o.gz" or "ne.o.gz" or whatever other module, very strange, is Mandrake going away from standards ?

Oops ok, got the realtek.c, i found it on the link you gave before, many thanks for your efficient help, i will try this at once

ok that's fine.
if modprobe doesn't give an error message,
please open a terminal as root and report back the results from typing:
ifconfig -a
A. if you see anything like eth0, type
netconfig (this is a console)
B. Would you like to set up networking? (select yes)
C.1 If you want a dhcp setup, his the space bar and hit tab until OK is selected and hit return.
C.2 If you have want a static IP, don't hit space bar and instead hit tab once (your cursor stops in the IP address
field)
--type in your ip address
--hit tab again and type your netmask (usually 255.255.255.0 is a good guess)
--hit tab again and type in your default gateway (the ip address of the nic shared on the local network for internet
access)
--hit tab again and enter your Primary nameserver (or skip it if you don't know it)
--hit tab (which selects OK) and hit enter
You're done.


if the modprobe doesn't work for you, can you copy and paste the output onto a floppy disk as follows?
1. Check to see if the correct module is loaded by typing with an output to a text file:
lsmod > lsmod.txt

2. To see how linux is detecting your NIC try:
lspci -v > lspci.txt

3. ls [return]

this should list the files you just created (in addition to any files that were already there). Put a floppy in your drive and type:

mount /mnt/floppy
cp lsmod.txt /mnt/floppy
cp lspci.txt /mnt/floppy

umount [return] (to unmount the disk and allow you to eject it)

put the floppy into your working computer which is connected to the internet and any machine should be able to read the .txt files. Copy and paste the files outputs here witth the results of 1 through 2 (above) for more help chipset).

Well well well
After all this, and with some elements got from here and from the support at SIS the only conclusion is this one :

- First i should have to spend over 100 Mo to insert the kernel sources without any warranty that this will work.

- Second Mandrake is only compatible with itself (non standard paths) and that's fun for a distro that claims to be standards compliant.

I can't figure any boss which will let you play with linux (Xbox ) whole the day or loose time to recompile the kernel for one device. Today's computing would be 30 years backwards with this principles.

- Third i will let all this and return to Windows which is more convenient for not loosing time and in fact more productive than this gadget which is linux for the moment. A long way to make linux become something productive, maybe other distros are more suitable but unfortunately i have only Mandrake and i know where this version 9 will go...directely to the trash.

Now for you and other members, i can only appreciate your nice help which is full of faith and belief in linux.
I wish to all of you a good continuation and courage which is needed with this sometimes magnificient stupid system.

I will add that everything worked fine in the informations you gave me till the modprobe who doesn't know where to find modules ( ) the great Mandrake standard