Hi,

After much ado, attempting to install Caldera, then Debian and RH without
any success, I finally found out the main reason. I was trying to do what it
appears many try at first, without success, and that is allocate an inferior
PC to load Linux for experimenting.

So, I used a PIII 550 with 10GIG HDD, 256 RAM and modern 17" monitor -
bingo!! ... no problem, RH8.0 installed perfectly. Windows 98 on C: drive
and RH8.0 on hdb.

I am now very excited to at last have installed and be able to run Linux!

All except one small detail - Linux will not recognise my network card. At
first I though it might be the card, although it works perfectly OK under
Win '98.

So I changed the card to a 3Com 3c509b as that is listed in the RH network
setup. Still no success. Damn it!!

I have read some articles, but they have just confused me even more.

Can anyone please point me to somewhere where I can get information/help to
solve this problem?

Any advise or info will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Lew.

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On Thu, 24 Oct 2002 08:16 pm, Lew posted to alt.os.linux the following blurb
::

> Hi,
>
> After much ado, attempting to install Caldera, then Debian and RH without
> any success, I finally found out the main reason. I was trying to do what
> it appears many try at first, without success, and that is allocate an
> inferior PC to load Linux for experimenting.

What do you mean?
Linux will quite happily run on a 386 with 4Meg RAM if you forfeit the GUI.
Albeit, if you must have a point and click system then something 200Mhz +
is in need...

> So, I used a PIII 550 with 10GIG HDD, 256 RAM and modern 17" monitor -
> bingo!! ... no problem, RH8.0 installed perfectly. Windows 98 on C: drive
> and RH8.0 on hdb.
>
> I am now very excited to at last have installed and be able to run Linux!

Welcome.... To the real world!

> All except one small detail - Linux will not recognise my network card. At
> first I though it might be the card, although it works perfectly OK under
> Win '98.

Working under windows meands the card works, it does not however mean that
there are Linux drivers for the card.

> So I changed the card to a 3Com 3c509b as that is listed in the RH network
> setup. Still no success. Damn it!!

You have to configure the card.
I dont know about RH specifically but you can use linuxconf at least to do
this, or find the Red Hat hardware device manager, it will be in the KDE
menu (or Gnome if thats what youre using)

> I have read some articles, but they have just confused me even more.

Linux How To's have a tendency to do this too newbies, the best way is too
read them a few times and then ask about what you dont understand.
Also always try searching google for the results to your problems...

Google contains a wealth of knowledge.

> Can anyone please point me to somewhere where I can get information/help
> to solve this problem?

There is always
www.tldp.org
www.google.con
www.redhat.com

Just to name a few

--
remember this is the sequence of events, in no particular order

Registered Linux User 282072
<www.volutin.net -- everything irrelevant>

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Lew wrote:
> Hi,
>
> After much ado, attempting to install Caldera, then Debian and RH without
> any success, I finally found out the main reason. I was trying to do what it
> appears many try at first, without success, and that is allocate an inferior
> PC to load Linux for experimenting.
>
> So, I used a PIII 550 with 10GIG HDD, 256 RAM and modern 17" monitor -
> bingo!! ... no problem, RH8.0 installed perfectly. Windows 98 on C: drive
> and RH8.0 on hdb.
>
> I am now very excited to at last have installed and be able to run Linux!
>
> All except one small detail - Linux will not recognise my network card. At
> first I though it might be the card, although it works perfectly OK under
> Win '98.
>
> So I changed the card to a 3Com 3c509b as that is listed in the RH network
> setup. Still no success. Damn it!!

I have had no end of problems with that model of card in Linux.
The drivers do exist for it, but I never got them to play well.
Oddly enough, they are autodetected and work well in Free BSD unix
(version 4.4 and up).

My suggestion is to go out and buy a cheap card like a DLINK 530.
They are usually about $5 to $15 and they work with all versions
of Linux that I have tried.

Tom

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In article <dMPt9.853$8o1.149104@news.xtra.co.nz>, "Lew"
<lew@businet.co.nz> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> After much ado, attempting to install Caldera, then Debian and RH
> without any success, I finally found out the main reason. I was trying
> to do what it appears many try at first, without success, and that is
> allocate an inferior PC to load Linux for experimenting.

Excuss me, just what do you mean by that, linux will run on even an old
386 machine, however presant day distro's like redhat have a default
kernel which will not run on such a mchine |unless| you take steps to
load a kernel compatable with your processor.

>
> So, I used a PIII 550 with 10GIG HDD, 256 RAM and modern 17" monitor -
> bingo!! ... no problem, RH8.0 installed perfectly. Windows 98 on C:
> drive and RH8.0 on hdb.

Welcome then.

>
> I am now very excited to at last have installed and be able to run
> Linux!
>
> All except one small detail - Linux will not recognise my network card.
> At first I though it might be the card, although it works perfectly OK
> under Win '98.
>
> So I changed the card to a 3Com 3c509b as that is listed in the RH
> network setup. Still no success. Damn it!!

Funny, the two machines i have here with such a card run flauwlesly.

Perhaps you could give us some info on how you try to load its module and
how your futher configure it with ifconfig.??

>
> I have read some articles, but they have just confused me even more.
>
> Can anyone please point me to somewhere where I can get information/help
> to solve this problem?


Basicly as root do;
modprobe 3c59x
ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.1 up
Replace of course 192.168.1.1 with your desired net address or use the
following example;
modprobe 3c59x
dhcpcd & (obtain a dhcp lease from your isp).

Thats it.

>
> Any advise or info will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Lew.
>
>


--
Regards Richard
pa3gcu@zeelandnet.nl
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/

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Joe Fredrickson wrote:

> What do you mean?
> Linux will quite happily run on a 386 with 4Meg RAM if you forfeit the
> GUI.
> Albeit, if you must have a point and click system then something 200Mhz +
> is in need...


This is an untrue statement about needing a 200MHz system. I have
Slackware 7.1 on an old 486 DX2/50MHz 20MB which runs X and gnome.
Though it is slow it has never crashed or had any problems what so ever
doing the job.

--
Confucius: He who play in root, eventually kill tree.
Registered with the Linux Counter. http://counter.li.org

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Lew, lew@businet.co.nz wrote:

[...]
> I am now very excited to at last have installed and be able to run
> Linux!
>
> All except one small detail - Linux will not recognise my network
> card. At first I though it might be the card, although it works
> perfectly OK under Win '98.
>
> So I changed the card to a 3Com 3c509b as that is listed in the RH
> network setup. Still no success. Damn it!!

We have installed 3C905-TX, 3C905B-TX, 3C905C-TX-NM and 3C905CX-TX-M
cards on several Linux boxes for our customers without problems. We
are going to be using the 3C905CX-TX-M cards in a new project to boot
diskless Linux workstations from LTSP enabled Linux servers. I
believe the 3C509B card uses the same driver as the 3C905* series.
You probably need to set up the NIC using whatever Hed Rat uses to
do that job these days. Try:

# lsmod

to get a list of loaded modules and look to see if 3c59x is loaded.
If it is not then:

# modprobe 3c59x

If it *is* loaded then:

# ifconfig eth0 up

should get your NIC up and running.

Presuming you are trying to connect several PCs: If you can afford
about $40-$50 go out and buy a 5-port 10/100 SOHO switch. Buy some
used 3COM 3C905* from somewhere, I have seen used ones sell for as
little as $5 on e-bay.

Gene <gene@eracc.hypermart.net>
SCO Group Authorized Partner - OpenServer, UnixWare & SCO Linux
--
Linux era1.eracc.UUCP 2.4.13 i686
2:23pm up 28 days, 21:13, 4 users, load average: 0.39, 0.48, 0.45
ERA Computer Consulting http://eracc.hypermart.net/
eCS, OS/2, Linux, OpenServer, UnixWare, SCO Linux resellers

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On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 04:23 am, David posted to alt.os.linux the following
blurb ::

>> Albeit, if you must have a point and click system then something 200Mhz +
>> is in need...
>
>
> This is an untrue statement about needing a 200MHz system. I have
> Slackware 7.1 on an old 486 DX2/50MHz 20MB which runs X and gnome.
> Though it is slow it has never crashed or had any problems what so ever
> doing the job.

Observe the blow quote, which is also above

>> Albeit, if you must have a point and click system then something 200Mhz +
>> is in need...

"Point and Click" usually means you want it to run in a half decent way
Ive had X running on a 486 using only Wmaker and its still "sluggish" not
really what you get from the same machine running win 95 (worse even 3.11)


--
remember this is the sequence of events, in no particular order

Registered Linux User 282072
<www.volutin.net -- everything irrelevant>

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On Thu, 24 Oct 2002 13:01:28 +0000, Richard Adams wrote:

> Path:
> newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net!news1-win.server.ntlworld.com!newspeer1-gui.se
> rver.ntli.net!ntli.net!peernews2.colt.net!colt.net!syros.belnet.be!news.bel
> net.be!news2.kpn.net!news.kpn.net!news1b.kpn.net!news1.zeelandnet.nl!not-fo
> r-mail
> From: "Richard Adams" <pa3gcu@zeelandnet.nl> Subject: Re: Network Card
> Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 13:01:28 +0000 Newsgroups: alt.os.linux
> Organization: ampr.org
> Message-ID: <20021024.130128.1192707556.566@zeelandnet.nl> References:
> <dMPt9.853$8o1.149104@news.xtra.co.nz> User-Agent: Pan/0.9.7 (Unix)
> Lines: 69
> NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.238.66.67
> X-Trace: 1035464484 news1.zeelandnet.nl 13955 62.238.66.67 Xref:
> newspeer1-gui.server.ntli.net alt.os.linux:262743 X-Received-Date: Thu,
> 24 Oct 2002 14:05:17 BST
> (newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net)
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding:
> 8bit
>
>
> In article <dMPt9.853$8o1.149104@news.xtra.co.nz>, "Lew"
> <lew@businet.co.nz> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> After much ado, attempting to install Caldera, then Debian and RH
>> without any success, I finally found out the main reason. I was trying
>> to do what it appears many try at first, without success, and that is
>> allocate an inferior PC to load Linux for experimenting.
>
> Excuss me, just what do you mean by that, linux will run on even an old
> 386 machine, however presant day distro's like redhat have a default
> kernel which will not run on such a mchine |unless| you take steps to
> load a kernel compatable with your processor.
>
>
>> So, I used a PIII 550 with 10GIG HDD, 256 RAM and modern 17" monitor -
>> bingo!! ... no problem, RH8.0 installed perfectly. Windows 98 on C:
>> drive and RH8.0 on hdb.
>
> Welcome then.
>
>
>> I am now very excited to at last have installed and be able to run
>> Linux!
>>
>> All except one small detail - Linux will not recognise my network card.
>> At first I though it might be the card, although it works perfectly OK
>> under Win '98.
>>
>> So I changed the card to a 3Com 3c509b as that is listed in the RH
>> network setup. Still no success. Damn it!!
>
> Funny, the two machines i have here with such a card run flauwlesly.
>
> Perhaps you could give us some info on how you try to load its module
> and how your futher configure it with ifconfig.??
>
>
>> I have read some articles, but they have just confused me even more.
>>
>> Can anyone please point me to somewhere where I can get
>> information/help to solve this problem?
>
>
> Basicly as root do;
> modprobe 3c59x
> ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.1 up
> Replace of course 192.168.1.1 with your desired net address or use the
> following example;
> modprobe 3c59x
> dhcpcd & (obtain a dhcp lease from your isp).
>
> Thats it.
>
>
>> Any advise or info will be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Lew.
>>
>>
>>
Wrong driver, the driver is 3c509, 3c59x is a completely different family
of nics.

You should go to the 3com website and download the driver disk packages
3c509x1.exe and 3c509x2.exe, these are dos self-extracting executables so
you will need a dos machine to unpack them. I think the second one
contains the stuff you need, run the batch file, pnpdsabl.bat power off
the machine as instucted then power on and run the utility 3c5x9cfg.exe to
assign the nic an unused irq and io base address.

Never had any problems with these nics under linux.

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In article <pan.2002.10.25.08.25.29.731665@nosuchplace.spam.org>, "itisme"
<itisme@nosuchplace.spam.org> wrote:
[colo
r=darkred]
>>> Any advise or info will be greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Lew.
>>>
> Wrong driver, the driver is 3c509, 3c59x is a completely different
> family of nics.[/color]

Oops, how correct you seem to be, i hope one will belive me when i say i
misread 509 for 905, sorry...

--
Regards Richard
pa3gcu@zeelandnet.nl
http://people.zeelandnet.nl/pa3gcu/

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Hi all

On Thu, 24 Oct 2002 23:16:46 +1300, "Lew" <lew@businet.co.nz> wrote:
>Hi,
>So I changed the card to a 3Com 3c509b as that is listed in the RH network
>setup. Still no success. Damn it!!

I found that the 3c509 would only load (the modules) succesfully when
i gave _no parameters_ (i.e. I/O Port and IRQ) for example when i
entered the correct parameters (io=0x300,IRQ =10) it would not load.
So maybe all you need is load the module _without parameters_.

This has happened actually on 2 distributions Suse 7.2 and Slackware.

HTH
Count

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