hi,
yesterday i burned the latest Debian network install cd, and i have installed it onto my laptop. however, as it is an older laptop it has no direct connections, but it does have a slot for a network card. i have two network cards, and both of their driver cd's (however their both windows drivers):

Netgear 108 mbps wireless card

Xircom Ethernet 10/100+Modem 56 (creditcard network adapter, not wireless)

i believe that since the xircom card is wired, i will have faster download rates (remember, network install), so, how do i go about installing? and if thats not possible, is it possible to install the netgear wireless card?

THX!!!

P.S. i already have the debian shell open on my laptop, ready for commands. all i need are the commands. Debian 3.1 r1 (Sarge), kernel 2.4

this list of supported PCMCIA network cards seems to say your card is listed and theirfor supported. Double check it is your card (I could be wrong). My advice is to stick in the CD start the install and see what (if anything) it detects. Linux in my experiance is good at detecting and installing drivers for network cards. as long as you have an up to date kernal. 2.6 will support most cards. 2.4 has better legacy support for realy old devices, so try with the 2.6 if that fails do the 2.4

Unless your internet connection is faster than your wireless then which card you use to install won't make much difference.

yep, it appears my card is on that list. i didnt actually check it in detail, but down at the bottom it pays acknowledgements to Xircom, so im quite sure linux supports my card then. however, during the installation, it didnt say anything about detecting. i mean, at one point it TRIED detecting an ethernet connection, but it gave up and asked me if i wanted to do PPP (no).

if it IS detected, is there some way i can check it? right now im gonna go see wut 'ifconfig -a' shows...

thx for the reply

may shine some light on it. If you like you can pop the output into more
or a file
then look at the file with your editor of choice such as nano, vi or emacs

there are some notes here on hardware detection and the lean towards debin if thats any help

Hawk,

Glad to hear you got your Debian disk burned . Anyways, have you tried shutting down the PC and booting up with the network card installed? Also, you could try inserting both cards and see if it detects them both (since you have two slots). Debian will probably at least autodetect your wired LAN card and if it's connected to a DHCP server (like a broadband router or broadband modem) get the network and internet connection up and running for you.

Good luck,
-Nick