having some trouble here. DSL cannot find my ethernet cards. I have PCI 10/100 ethernet card and an ISA card and have had no luck with either. I'm pretty much a noob and would appreciate some help. Thanks

First up, do you know what make + model these cards are? If you do, check out the HCL on this to check for Linux compatibility, which should also give pointers as to how to get them working. If not, type the command "lspci" at the command prompt and look for a line starting "Ethernet Controller:" and should then display your card.

My PCI card (which I'm gussing i have the best chance to get going) is based on the Realtek 8139 chipseries. I haven't had luck with lspci. I get somthing that says ISA bridge but nothing like ethernet controller. my computer is a compaq PII 200. am i going to have to build the driver by hand? is that the right terminology?

Some more info i should add:

the PCI card is an Encore ENL832-TX-RENT which like i said is based on the RealTek 8139 chip

lspci gives the following devices:

host bridge:
ISA bridge:
IDE interface:
VGA compatible controler:


Also, I am currently running DSL off the live cd because I have been hesitant to wipe my HD and install it without the internet working. Would a HD install help?

Is there anything in the file '/etc/sysconfig/netcard'?

Also does 'ifconfig' give you any details?

there is no such directory in sysconfig and ifconfig says the following

lo linkencap
inetaddr

and some more things about lo but nothing about ethernet (lo isn't ethernet is it? i was expecting to see eth0 or something)

The file 'netcard' must not exist because it has not recognized your card, otherwise it would tell you the name of your card and the driver it is using. I believe mine is based on the same chipset, the driver it is using is '8139too'.
As far as 'lo', that is the loopback device. If your card was active you would see something to the effect of eth0, like you said.
This chipset is a pretty common one a believe so it is probably something to do with some system setting. I know of people using dsl with this chipset before that had to turn off plug & play in order to have dsl recognize their card. I would give that a try.

thanks a lot for the explanation. I still can't seem to get it to work. I'm not very familiar with system settings and the bios is real old (i think). There is a section for mapping PCI/PNP settings and I have tried a couple of things but have no way of knowing if i'm on the right track...its just gropping in the dark. do you know of a resource where i could learn more? Do you think another distro of linux would have similar problems? thanks.

good news, i got it online. thanks for all your help...i learned a lot with simple little task.

Glad to hear you got it all working. Another command that I forgot that might have come in usefull is 'lspci'. Also dsl has a new version 2.0RC out, with an updated kernel. You could also try this with livecd to see if it recognizes it right off the bat.