problem with Linksys EtherFast 10/100 PC Card
(PCMPC100 v3.0)!

according to their website, this card should work
if one does the following:
- get PCMCIA services
- enable networking
- recompile kernel
and they claimed that it should be "automatically"
detected. now, here's what i did:

- i downloaded PCMCIA services 3.1.24 and compiled
it (i had to turn off ieee1394 support to get it
compiled). i am using SuSe 2.2.14 by the way;
- i recompiled the kernel with networking support
on, and then installed the modules. everything
is fine up to this point;
- i rebooted the machine, and on socket 0 the
card manager found "NE2000 compatible". it then
said it can't get device info on that card;
- so i modified /etc/pcmcia/config to add the entry
for my card (using the info from cardctl ident).
this time when i rebooted it, it found it, but
still couldn't get device info;
- i looked at the log message, and guess what, it
couldn't reach the hardware net address. so as
a quick and dirty try-out, i hardwired the address
in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts for pcnet_cs. THIS
TIME IT KNOWS HOW TO DO IT. "./network start eth0"
appears!
- but after i looged in as root, ifconfig doesn't
give me anything about eth0. only local loop...
however, /proc/net/dev does display the entry for
eth0, but every field is 0. and of course, i
couldn't reach any web site or whatever.

could there still be anything that i've missed? i
mean, i've done everything from what i read (and i
read a lot!). i'm starting to feel very frustrated
about this...

please advise. many thanks.

evan

i am replying to myself.
i don't know if anybody would actually
read this. but if you are buying this
Linksys card (PCMPC100 v3) and hope that
you would be able to hook it up in Linux,
think again. the chipset is not supported
by the latest pcnet driver.

after struggling with it for more than
30 days, i went buy another more expensive
card, Netgear FA510c. turned out it's
working great, i didn't need to do much
to have Linux recognize it. and it's
FAST.

evan

Did you ever try to insmod the driver for the ehternet card? If it doesn't show up after an ifconfig, then usually if you do have the driver, you can insmod it so it starts using it. Then configure the card from there.

yes. actually after i added the description of the card
into /etc/pcmcia/config, Linux detects the card and starts
to execute

modprobe 8390
modprobe pcnet_cs

but then it complains that the chipset AX88190 is not
supported, and that it couldn't read the card's net
address for io base 0x300. and even after i hardwired
the address to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts, i still couldn't
connect to the internet. this is when i am determined
this card won't work.

do you have any ideas?

thanks!

evan