hi all,

I tried installing debian and I have a 3com 3c509B that is (apparently) not recognized by the system: It is not listed with /sbin/lspci
When using dmesg I get a message saying that the 3c59x (59x not 509!) driver has been loaded; Still, I get no trace of any ethernet device anywhere.
Does that mean that my card is defective ? (or should I just disable PnP)
P.S: I really don't wanna installl M$ to test the card ;-)

Thanks in advance

The 3c59x drivers is the correct driver for that network card. If you type ifconfig eth0 do you get information about a network card? It sounds like it might already be recognized... though I can't imagine why lspci wouldn't have any information...

FYI: a 3Com 509 is an ISA network card, this may be why it doesn'ty show up in lspci. It also uses the module 3c509, as opposed to the 3c59x module for 590, 595 and 900,905 cards.

If it's in PnP mode, you should be able to just modprobe 3c509 to load it, then you will have your eth0 or eth1. If you don't have a 905/900/595/590 card you may want to unload the 59x module first with rmmod 3c59x

First thanks for your prompt replies:
Now, the 3c59x card doesnt seem to be loaded as a module as an lsmod just lists: af_packet (I just installed the base for Debian and I need the network to install some more)
dmesg on the other hand does at talk about:

3c59x.c 18Feb01 Donald Becker and others Donald's website's URL

When I try loading the 3c509 module I get the following:

/...../3c509.o: init_module: Device or resource busy
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ
insmod 3c509.o failed
insmod 3c509 failed

I added a line in /etc/modules.conf to define IO and IRQ parameters but same error messages.

Thanks a lot

When I type ifconfig eth0 I get an error: Device not found ;-)

Please post the results of just running
-- J.W.

ifconfig tells the following:

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask 255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3924 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frames:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frames:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0,0 b) TX bytes:0 (0,0 b)

Okay,

I downloaded the 3com utility 3c509x2.exe and booted from a DOS floppy ( ) Guess what? The card was dead !

Thanks for your help