[eepro100] My Solution to eepro100: wait_for_cmd timeout

[Luminescent]

This post is meant to document my solution to this problem, so that
others searching for a solution can see what I did.

My system: Toshiba 2805-s402 laptop, with a built-in Intel Ethernet
card, running Debian Sid.

The problem: Intense or extended network activity caused the ethernet
card to stop responding, generating the "eepro100: wait_for_cmd timeout"
error. A temporary solution was to run "/etc/init.d/networking restart"
whenever this occurred, but this wasn't an acceptable final solution.

The general solution: Use the e100 driver (if it works for your network
card), which can be obtained via apt-get, or elsewhere on the internet.

My specific problem: When I compiled my new kernel (2.4.14), I hardcoded
support for the eepro100 driver (oops!), rather than making it load a
module. This, effectively, thwarted all attempts to make the e100 driver
load, as eepro100 was always loading first.

My specific solution: I had to recompile my kernel, using the make
menuconfig option to change the eepro100 driver from hardcoded to a
module. After my reboot, all I needed to do was reinstall the NVDriver
module, to get X working, and then install the e100 driver, insmod it,
reboot (simply running "/etc/init.d/networking restart" likely would
have worked as well), and I was set.

Tools I found useful: "lsmod" (run as root) will tell you which drivers
are loaded as modules. If you don't see eepro100, or e100, but you can
still access the internet, then it's quite likely that eepro100 has been
hardcoded into your kernel, in which case, see "my specific solution",
above.

A possible outstanding problem: On the first boot with the new e100
module installed, I had to run "/etc/init.d/networking restart" to
access the internet. If this continues to be the case, then I'll just
make sure that this command is run at the end of the boot process,
possibly via rc.local, or perhaps in Xsetup (though I'd rather not have
it in Xsetup, since the network will reset every time I close my
X-Session, and restart X).

Hopefully this will help others with the same problem.

-Luminescent