I had my 3com card working fine yesterday. Now I just re-installed gentoo (2.6 dev kernel, same as before) and it can't uplaod the firmware.

I've tried everything. dmesg out put is:

eth1: islpci_open()
eth1:resetting device...
eth1:uploading firmware...
prism54:request_firmware() failed for 'is13890'
eth1:could not upload firmware ('osl3890')

lspci recognises the card as 000:03:00.0 Network controller: 3Com ............................

ALSO, I checked all the mor eoobvious stuff...

=================================================================

*) does "cat /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug" show something like "/sbin/hotplug"? YES

*) is /sbin/hotplug present? YES

*) is the "firmware" agent is present (call /sbin/hotplug without
any argument to show a list of available agents) YES

*) have you copied the firmware file into the folder expected by
firmware.agent? (usually "/usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/") YES

*) for 2.6.x you need to mount sysfs! I THINK SO. ls -F /sys returns:
block/ bus/ /class /devices /firmware /module /power
ONLY acpi is listed in firmware.

Other issues not directly related to firmware uploading:

*) [cardbus] have 'yenta_socket' module loaded in order to make cardbus
card visible to the kernel pci subsystem? (check with lspci(1) whether
device is visible to the kernel) YES, CARD IS RECOGNISED
===============================================================

Permissions on /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/isl3890 are -rw-r--r--.

I don't know what else to try. It's weird that last time it worked as soon as I emerged the prism54 ebuild

The card works fin under KNoppix so I know that's not bust

Yeah!! solved it. Well actually I haven't solved it but I got it working.

1. Booted up Knoppix.
2. Copy over the firmware.agent file from /etc/hotplug in /KNOPPIX to the /etc/hotplug folder on the Gentoo install (on hda3 in my case, remember to mount the hd with read permissions).
3. Copy over the /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/isl3890 file in /KNOPPIX to the equivalent folder on the Gentoo install.

In my case it was the firmware.agent that was shagged.

EDIT: dangertools says this might be due to a change in file path. see http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=238544