[realtek] networking problems....

[Donald Becker]

On Sat, 26 Aug 2000, David Pitts wrote:

> I bought 3 HP Pavilion PC's model 8772C. They came with 100Base-T LAN
> Adapters. The first one configured and is up and running no problem. The
> other two have the same problem. The network cards will not configure/run
> properly. If I try to install RedHat 6.2 and configure networking at the
> time of install, it install dies right after loading all the software. If

What do you mean "dies".  Does the machine
   stop installing with the OS still running (e.g. CapsLock LED toggling),
   completely freeze
   produce a kernel crash message.

> would not work. The card is recognized as SMC 1211TX and loaded the driver
> rtl8139. I went out to RedHat and searched for this card. Found that there

Normal.

> are a couple models and some of them work and some do not. I downloaded
> the new drivers/patches for this card loaded it. It still did not work. I
> went down to the computer store and purchased 2 3Com cards - model
> no. 3CSOHO100-TX. which uses the 3c59x driver. I configured the networking
> with this card, and had the same problem. I downloaded the newest drivers
> from the web and installed them, and it still did not work...... ARGH!

This doesn't sound like a driver problem, but rather a machine configuration
problem.  We will need more info to track it down.  What was the card
detection message?

If you can, run the rtl8139-diag program from:
  http://www.scyld.com/diag/index.html

> HP 10/100Base-T LAN Adapter (Ethernet)
> which Linux recognized as an SMC 1211TX and loaded the driver rtl8139 

It's a RealTek chip, with Accton's PCI ID.  Accton bought the SMC brand
name.  The old SMC is now "SMSC".

> So, I went and bought a 3Com model 3CSOHO100-TX card and replaced the
> other card with this one. I wen to Red Hat site and searched for this
> card, which uses the 3c59x driver. 

I'm guessing that you either don't have the card in a bus-master slot, or
it's assigned an invalid IRQ (0 or 255) by the BIOS.
Read
   http://www.scyld.com/expert/irq-conflict.html

Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Beowulf-II Cluster Distribution
Annapolis MD 21403