I just installed Mandrake 9.0 on a new system with an Asus A7N8X board, and I can't get a lan connection. I've tried several of the 3com drivers, but none seem to work. I'm pretty much a complete newbie, so there may be an obvious answer I'm missing.

According to the specs it has two possible LAN ports..

LAN
2 Ports
MCP integrated NVIDIA® MAC + Realtek® 8201BL PHY
MCP integrated 3Com® MAC + Broadcom® AC101L PHY (Deluxe Model)

Have you tried any of the realtek drivers.. if you might have the non-deluxe model ?

I haven't tried the realtec drivers (I do have the deluxe model) -- I'll give them a try.

try using kudzu or try to install it from drakconf's hardware manager... Anyway, when you try to set up a network conection you should get the option to auto detect the interface. Make sure your conection is propetly configured.

As you do have the deluxe version, you should have the broadcom thing. Have you looked at the mobo cd? I have the A7V8X and mine had linux drivers on the cd. Otherwise have a look at the asus website, they may have a linux driver download there.

Unfortunatelly it's not the realtek driver that's needed. it's the MCP NVIDIA MAC driuver (avaliable at www.nvidia.com).
This is the response from realtek:
The Ethernet hardware consists of two parts: a PHY chip, and a MAC chip. It's the MAC chip that requires the drivers. RTL8201x is a PHY only chip which does NOT need any driver at all. If you have RTL8201x in your computer system, there must be another MAC chip in the system too. Most likely, the MAC chip is embedded in the chipset. Please contact the board or computer provider to find out which MAC chip is in your system and how to get the drivers for it.

p.s. Be careful with downloading the nvidia drivers (PRM packages). It doesn't work for me. Does some mess with my speedtouch ppp and locks usb-core (irq problems ? or sth)

http://www.asus.com/support/download...item=Socket478

These guys have linux drivers.

Downloaded the NVIDIA_nforce-1.0-0261.src.rpm package and rebuild it with rpmrebiuld. Workks fine now. Thanks everybody.