slack 3.3 NIC and X help
 

I recently accquired a (free) pretty old beast of a computer. Here are the specs

40MHz 486sx (its a 33 overclocked with a heatsink i added, it had no heatsink)
8 MB RAM (won't take anymore simms without flashing BIOS...i figure its not worth it)
164MB Harddrive....This would be worth upgrading, but all my harddrives are over 540MB and it also needs a BIOS flash to recognize these, so im just sticking with it
Win95 with software I'd like to keep
Floppy drive only, added second floppy drive
No CD drive as noted above
3Com 3c509B NIC
Soundcard...don't care about it.


Alright, so i FINALLY got all the parts of slackware I need put onto a bucket full o' floppies. Windows has some security software on it that prevents me from defragging (no clue why that would be "insecure") so when I fips the drive i can only squeeze about 40 megs out of it...even tho 80 are free, so if you know of a way to defrag fat through linux i'd appreciate it :-P. Anyways I made 12megs swap and am left with a bit over 30MB to install slack, which is why i am using 3.3. I installed all that I need from the A series, ncurses, lynx, and tcp/ip. All is going well (as far as this post is concerned) until i tried to get on the network. I noticed that /dev/eth0 is not even a file. and I definitely installed dev.tgz. So basically I am wondering how do i get /dev/eth0 there, or is it something else on a distro this old? and is the 3c509B already in the kernel, or do i need a module? and where is the module.

Just as an after thought, if i can ever defrag this drive do you think i'd be able to run a simple X server? with anything besides twm? Alright, thanks :)

**note** I just realized that i can copy DOS defrag to a DOS boot disk and defrag that way, so i should have about 75 megs to be working with. Thanks for the help in advance.

Where did you see /dev/eth0 ? Have tried to even google it ? ;)
try dmesg | grep eth0 or something similar to see what happen, maybe you have to edit
/etc/modules.conf or /etc/conf.modules (don't know the right name in slack 3.3) so you add a line like
alias eth0 3c509B

"dmesg" alone doesn't return anything that seems NIC-ish to me. "dmesg grep | eth0" returns that eth0 is not a command. I do not KNOW that the NIC is /dev/eth0, I just know the interface in SuSE linux is eth0. Right now with the command "netstat -i" i only show up as having the "lo" loopback interface. Which is how it seems too.

I can ping 127.0.0.1, but not 192.168.0.7 (the IP I assigned the computer with netconfig) or any other IP on the internet or my LAN.

There is nothing in /etc that is anywhere near modules.conf. I know the card is good because windows 95 detects it. I doubt it is hardware problems at all because slackware seems to not detect it at all. 3com is a very common NIC, the only thing i can think of is that the 3c509 models where released after slackware 3.3 was so it is not precompiled. But i don't think that is how it is! argh, lol.

PS I tried running MAKEDEV* in the /dev directory...but i have no clue how and my man pages aren't working per lack of groff.

EDIT: 3.3 came out in 1997, well after any ISA NIC would have been being invented.

Try
dmesg | grep eth0

:p

i also have an old 3c509b card and it works.
you'll need a program to change the settings of that card to not use pnp.

dou you have that ?

egag

A little off topic but, I'm really wondering what use you're going to make with that machine =)

Alright, resolved it. /etc/rc.modules (or s/t close to that) required a bit of editing. To answer the question of what i'd use it for...lol. 30 megs isn't really enough space even for just CLI w/ lynx, so eventually i'll use the entire 167 megs for slack and try out X. Should be a snitch since 3.3 was designed for old old hardware.