mandrake 9.2 RC2 + SiS 900 network card
 

to start off with, i'm a newbie to linux so i don't have much experience.

basically, i've setup a duel boot of mandrake 9.2 RC2 with WinXP. I use a network card which has the SiS900 chip which works fine in XP. In XP i can connect the card to an ADSL router which is running a DHCP server so i have no worries with assigning IP and DNS addresses on the network.

mandrake found that i was using the SiS 900 chip so installed the module but on boot eth0 always fails. the connection between the NIC and the router is definately present (lights lit up on router) but for some reason mandrake can't get an IP using DHCP. i've tried using static IP addresses and still couldn't ping anything (such as the router which in this case is 192.168.8.1).

I also have a USB network adapter for my laptop which i tried on my desktop PC and mandrake found it straight aways and it had an IP address assigned using DHCP from the router and was all working, internet, the lot.

I've tried reading other posts on the forums and trying out several methods such as making sure the right drivers are setup using command line 'insmod sis900' and got a reply saying that the module already existed.

If anyone could help me then i'd be very happy.

thanks in advance,
Andy

All I can say is that i got exactly the same problem!

Not only in Mandrake, its also in RH9, SuSE 9.0 and some other new distribs!!
I think theres gotta be some bug in the (new?!) sis900 module or something, because i can use it without any problems on an older slack install!

Pleasee help us...

i'm glad i'm not the only one. i bought my network card from ebuyer.com and the user reviews on there say that people have setup and used the card under different linux distros using the sis900 driver which is exactly what we're trying to do.

as zaubara said 'Pleasee help us...'

help us, please?!

Having the same problem on suse9. The driver loads, but no network whatsoever. The suse support site has something about it, but I do not know if this applies to the 9.x distros. My sis900 card is indeed ref91 as mentioned in the text below. However, I get that my driver is active...

I'll have to paste it as it is from the login section of suse's support site:

"quote start"

The Network Card SiS900 Cannot Be Configured
Applies to:

Symptom
You have setup your network card or on-board network chip with YaST2, but no network or DSL connection can be established.
When booting your system, the message: eth0 ifup: Could not get a valid interface name: -> skipped
or: eth0:Error EEPROM read 0
is displayed.
Cause
A revision of this chipset (rev 91) could not be configured with the kernel included on the CDs.
This revision can only be supported after some changes have been performed in the kernel.

Solution
First make sure that the chipset's revision is actually 91.
For this purpose, execute the following commands in a console:

su -
your_root_password

hwinfo --network_ctrl

The displayed output is similar to:

20: PCI 04.0: 0200 Ethernet controller
[Created at pci.65]
Unique ID: 8otl.uF4U5g2jiXA
Hardware Class: network
Model: "Micro-star International SiS900 10/100 Ethernet"
Vendor: pci 0x1039 "Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]"
Device: pci 0x0900 "SiS900 10/100 Ethernet"
SubVendor: pci 0x1462 "Micro-star International Co Ltd"
SubDevice: pci 0x0900
Revision: 0x91
I/O Ports: 0xbc00-0xbcff (rw)
Memory Range: 0xe0125000-??? (rw,non-prefetchable)
IRQ: 3 (no events)
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: sis900 is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "insmod sis900"
Config Status: cfg=yes, avail=yes, need=no

The line 'Revision' displays the revision number, which is 0x91 in this example.

If this is also the case in your system, install the current kernel from our ftp server.
To do this, proceed as described in the article: .

Then you will be able to configure your on-board network chip.

"quote end"

SAME PROB !
 

I am having the exact same prob. However mine was working fine until I installed a new powersupply. And now not only is my Sis 900 network eth not working but also the integrated Sis sound card... uggg... If anyone finds anything send it over here..

Same problem but ...
 

I tried to install a dual boot with linux and winXP on an Acer 1705 Laptop, which contains also a SiS 900 network adapter.

To set up a xDSL connection within Redhat 9.0 worked. But Redhat 9.0 does not support the GeForce graphic card of my laptop, so I installed SUSE 8.1 and later on 9. On both I could not set up a connection. Neither via YAST 2 nor via ifconfig and editing files by hand.

I suppose this is not a general problem of the driver. It seems to be a problem connected with the distribution.