I am a Linux newbie. I installed Mandriva 2006 on my old P3-600 with 512MB RAM. I am attempting to use a Netgear FA311 NIC. The NIC autoconfigures following the install. The NIC is listed as eth0 using the natsemi driver. I am using KDE 3.4 so from the desktop I see a network connection icon with a broken \ stop symbol. When I select "connect eth0" from the network menu in KDE the system attempts to connect. After about 60 to 90 seconds of attempting to connect it errors out with "Conection failue.." I tried to use both DHCP and static, IP all with no success. I used lsmod to see if the natsemi driver was listed and it was. I used modprobe natsemi and rebooted and that did not work. What am I doing wrong?

I resolved the problem by switching to a different PCI slot. I wonder if it was a shared IRQ with my sound card? Needless to say I am making this post on my new Linux box.

The main thing is that you have it working. Well done