Net Installation
 

I tried installing RH 7 on a IBM TP 380XD over the internet and got to the part of choosing my network card and it didn't have drivers for it. I did create a drivers diskette.

It's a combined network + 56k Xircom pc card. Is there a way to get the drivers for this card and have it available when I do the net install? I can't burn a cd, no burner.

Is there a generic driver I could use with this pc card?

Thnx.
:smash:

Yes and no. Linux doesn't deal well with the combo cards as the pcmcia-core doesn't know to treat it as one or the other unless you hand-craft your config file in /etc/pcmcia. In a net install, this can probably be a bit of a headache, but if you can get a command line, its possible. You would have to google as to what xircom module to bind that card to, but its possible.

Really, it would just be a lot easier if you could borrow a PCMCIA card like a 3com or a Linksys, or any of the xircoms that are solo, then do the net install, and then deal with the combo card after the fact.

Also, the new card manager for the 2.4.x kernel series, yenta_socket, sometimes has issues with older pcmcia busses, which would probably mean the ThinkPad 380-ish series. If you google for the specific pcmcia chipset, and then poke around for know issues with yenta_socket, you should find out easily if you're on that list. If you are... probably have to go with a 2.2.x series based distro to start with. I take it this kid has no CDrom?

Cheers,

Finegan

Oh, just read back... I imediately assumed RH 7.2 (the newest). 7.0 still had the good old reliable external pcmcia_cs package. However, 7.0 did ship with a crap compiler...