THUFIR HAWAT wrote: > I have an older computer which is an IBM personal computer 300 GL > desktop. This computer, named geidiprime, is a pentium II and has two > NIC's: 3com and D-Link. However: > <snip> > The D-Link NIC came with a cd labeled DFE538TX, which holds the > driver, which I installed. Hope you mean "on Windows". Don't touch it for Linux. http://support.dlink.com/faq/view.asp?prod_id=487&question=General%20Linux says the card is supported, and strongly implies it's a Realtek 8139 variant. This chip is very cheap, and has been pretty reliable in my experience. Most 100 Mbit/s cards (apart from Intel or 3Com cards) seem to be based around it. The driver, these days, is 8139too. This is well supported on Linux: expect to plug and play. You may have to run system-config-network to set IP addresses. > The 3com I know nothing about, but it came > with the computer. 3com support, I understand, is generally pretty good. > I've recently used the D-Link NIC in a different > computer and am quite confident that both NIC's are physically ok, but > am only reasonably certain they're installed correctly. > > Instead of Windows 2000 (win2k) I'll install, at least temporarily, > Linux. I'm crossing my fingers that Linux will see at least one of > these NIC's, which, for whatever, win2k isn't. Is this a vain hope? > I just want to find out what's going on. Assuming, if you don't mind, > that Linux doesn't show detecting these NIC's during the boot, what > are some things to do? Do they show up in Device Manager under Windows 2000? If they do, then it's probably just a Windows driver error. If not, then there may be problems with the PCI system or the motherboard. If you just want to check that the NICs work, I'd recommend a live CD variant (one that boots into Linux straight from the CD). I haven't heard of a Fedora based live CD recently: I'd look at the Ubuntu live CD or Knoppix / Gnoppix. (I hope no-one minds if I temporarily go off-topic: there should be drivers for the Dlink card built into Windows 2000. You might care, through Device Manager, trying right-clicking on the card, going to Driver tab -> Update Driver, and choosing one of the other driver options.) Hope this helps, James. -- E-mail address: james | If infinite rednecks fired infinite shotguns at an @westexe.demon.co.uk | infinite number of road signs, they'd eventually | create all the great literary works of the world. | In braille.
