Hi guys.

Well, first off, introduction: I'm new to the Linux field though not at all new to computers. I've been wanting to get a Linux box up and running for quite some time now, but I've always had issues in the past (side note: Gentoo =! good OS for newbies ) Finally i got this (really) old Gateway laptop (specs) and I've put Slackware 12.1 on it.

Anyways, the issue stems from the fact that the laptop, for some stupid reason has NO networking peripherals. No modem, no network card, no nothing. it does have 2 PCMCIA slots though, so I bought an (also old) 3com Megahertz LAN 10 mbps LAN PC Card (#3CCE589ET).

i plugged it into my laptop, fired it up, and prayed for some sort of auto detection. i started KDE and went to network settings. after a few seconds it said "platform not supported"

so i guess that's where I'm stuck. I'm sure there's a lot more i could be doing, but i don't really know where to start. if someone could help me, even just point me to a tutorial or guide somewhere, i would be delighted.

thanks for reading and i appreciate any tips or pointers you may have!

p.s. quick question: i only have 128 meg of ram in the thing. am i stupid? (y/n)

As root, run `netconfig`. That will *normally* set up everything properly. You may have to issue `/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart` (or just reboot) to reinitialize the network interface after running netconfig, but I'm not sure. If it *doesn't* work, post the ouput of `lspci -vv`, `ifconfig -a`, `lsmod` and `route -n` and we can try to help you from there.

SUCCESS!

thank you very, very much for a prompt and helpful response!

btw, i don't need too now, but can you tell me how you'd dump the output form a command to a file? i think you use | somehow...

oh, and it asked me for my domain in netconfig.... what's that? i just made one up....

works wonders. You could also use `| tee`...but that's more typing. `man tee` should tell you all you need to know. For example, to dump `ifconfig -a` output into the file ~/test.txt, use the following command:
That would be the equivalent of a Work Group or whatever they're calling it in Windows. Basically, it is the domain to which your PC belongs. I always just use localdomain since it isn't terribly important to me and I am not hosting a web server or any such thing. From Slackware-HOWTO on the install CD/DVD or at your favourite mirror:
[edit]Hey, my 1000th post! Nifty! I'm no longer just a 'Member'...I'm a 'Senior Member'! [/edit]