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Ethernet card wont activate

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RudeCat7:
I am tinkering with my spare box, and I was going to hook it up to my cable modem to get online, but for some reason it wont activate.

It is a 3com590. It is detected but it wont activate in Suse or Redhat 8.0 and 7.3.

I don't remember it being this hard before. My main box uses a D-link card and the card worked perfectly by just using the simple "configure network card" in Yast2.

As far as I remember, DCHP took care of everything when hooking up to my cable modem.

Do I need to configure the:
1) computer name and 2) workgroup settings
similar to the windows tcp/ip?

Can a Suse install "migrate" the tcp/ip settings from the windows partition? This would explain why it was easier for my dual boot box to connect.

voidmain:
That card *should* work:

http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/?pagename=details&hid=4255

I have used many 3Com cards in various versions of RedHat (3c503, 3c507, 3c509, 3c905, 3c905B, 3c905C, 3c920). I believe I have also used the 3c590 but can't remember for sure.

I assume you normally get your IP address via DHCP. In RedHat 8.0 in your Network Configuration click "Edit". All you should have to do is click "Automatically Obtain IP address" with DHCP. Obviously if you do not use DHCP you will need to click "Statically set IP address" and fill in the appropriate addresses.

No there is no "Migrate" function for Windows networking, nor would I ever expect there to be such a tool. I assume you are referring to Windows specific networking (Samba). Samba is not required for basic TCP/IP networking (accessing the Internet, etc). Is your Windows side configured for DHCP (TCP/IP->Obtain an address)?

I suppose it's possible you make have to pass some parameters to the 3Com Ethernet driver but this usually is not necessary. Do you get any errors? If it doesn't pop up with any you might want to look in the system logs after attempting to "Activate" the card (there is a now a graphical utility in RedHat 8.0 to view the system logs).

I know this probably isn't the most helpful but maybe it will lead you deeper and help you find something more specific out of the ordinary.

[ October 04, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

pkd_lives:
As far as I can gather the 3C590 has only Win and  UNIX driver available. Although Red Hat say it's supported, I suspect it works with the older drivers. Try running it using one of the earlier 3com drivers.

Also 3 com adivse that you should run their DOS based driver disk to get the IRQ and Plug 'n' Play options enabled (although why this should be so in Linux I'm not sure). I think you will have to use it as a kind of boot disk. Sorry can't help you further, my network card refuses to activate under Red Hat so I reinstalled Mandrake and it works (although manufacturer refuses to support it).

voidmain:
That card was one of those that had a configurable onboard EEPROM which was configurable through a DOS based utility written by 3com. That's what that part was for. You could do things like turn off PnP or set other parameters like which connection type to default to, IRQ, memory address, etc.

The Vortex driver (3c59x) included with Linux should work. If you have your kernel source installed you should find the "vortex.txt" file under /usr/src/linux*/Documentation/networking directory. It will describe some module parameters that you can pass (there should be options for passing the module parameters in your graphical Network Setup). Vortex.txt:


--- Code: ---
--- End code ---

Now, you may want to get the DOS utility so you can see how the EEPROM is configured. Of course when you can pick up a 10/100 D-Link card for ~10 bucks you may not want to work very long trying to get that 10Mbps 3Com card working. :)

[ October 04, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

RudeCat7:
O.k. Thanks a lot! This tells me that that card is not really Linux friendly. Yes, I will just buy a new one Like you said. That card was just a spare.

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