🚀 go-pugleaf

[Posted and mailed]

In article <36FAE202.A8AAC42D@mci.com>,
	Hus <huseni.saboowala@mci.com> writes:
> Hello,
> 
> Greetings!!!
> 
> I've a LinkSys LNE100Tx Fast Ethernet card on my PC which my SuSE Linux
> 5.3 fails to recognise/startup.
> Apparently this card is not in the list of standard networking card
> modules provided  by my Linux vendor. So I tried selecting a similar
> 3Com card and a few other standard cards ..but no luck.(Is this the
> right way to do it?? how do u connect non-standard cards anyway?? do I
> need a specific linux device driver for it??)

The Linksys LNE100TX is one of MANY cards based on the DEC "Tulip"
chipset.  Unfortunately, I gather that DEC is no longer making this
chipset (the reports I've seen are that Intel swallowed up that part of
DEC and has discontinued the chipset).  Fortunately, a number of clones of
the Tulip chipset have become available, and most Tulip board
manufacturers, including Linksys, have simply switched to one of these
clones.  The clones may not be recognized by any but the latest of the
Linux Tulip drivers, though.  You can obtain the latest from:

http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/tulip-devel.html

You'll need to take the tulip.c file and put it in your kernel source
directory (in drivers/net, IIRC), then recompile either modules or the
kernel, depending upon how your system is configured.

Now, if your card is old enough to have a "genuine" DEC part, it SHOULD be
recognized already, assuming that SuSE includes Tulip support by default. 
That assumption could be wrong.  In either event, try this at a command
prompt:

dmesg | grep eth0 -

This will show you the kernel bootup messages concerning the eth0 device. 
Here's what this returns on my system, which uses a recent Linksys
LNE100TX with a Tulip clone:

eth0: Lite-On 82c168 PNIC at 0x7c00, xx xx xx xx xx xx, IRQ 11.
eth0:  MII transceiver #1 config 3100 status 7829 advertising 01e1.
eth0: The transmitter stopped!  CSR5 is 2068012, CSR6 812e0002.
eth0: Changing PNIC configuration to half-duplex, CSR6 812e0000.

(I've axed my board's identifying numbers.)  The output for a board with
an original DEC part will be a bit different, of course, but you should
see some sort of part identification and status report.

-- 
Rod Smith
rodsmith@channel1.uceprotect.com
http://www.channel1.com/users/rodsmith
NOTE: Remove the "uce" word from my address to mail me