Linux often has problems dealing with ISA NICs because of the way that the
bus distributes IRQ's and address space.  Here's a blurb from the Linux
Ethernet-HOWTO on Dlink ISA cards:

------------

DE-100, DE-200, DE-220-T, DE-250
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)

Some of the early D-Link cards didn't have the 0x57 PROM signature, but the
ne2000 driver knows about them. For the software configurable cards, you can
get the config program from www.dlink.com. The DE2** cards were the most
widely reported as having the spurious transfer address mismatch errors with
early versions of linux. Note that there are also cards from Digital (DEC)
that are also named DE100 and DE200, but the similarity stops there.

Linux and ISA Plug and Play Ethernet Cards

For best results (and minimum aggravation) it is recommended that you use
the (usually DOS) program that came with your card to disable the PnP
mechanism and set it to a fixed I/O address and IRQ. Make sure the I/O
address you use is probed by the driver at boot, or if using modules then
supply the address as an io= option in /etc/conf.modules. You may also have
to enter the BIOS/CMOS setup and mark the IRQ as Legacy-ISA instead of PnP
(if your computer has this option).

Note that you typically don't need DOS installed to run a DOS based
configuration program. You can usually just boot a DOS floppy disk and run
them from the supplied floppy disk. You can also download OpenDOS and
FreeDOS for free.

If you require PnP enabled for compatibility with some other operating
system then you will have to use the isapnptools package with linux to
configure the card(s) each time at boot. You will still have to make sure
the I/O address chosen for the card is probed by the driver or supplied as
an io= option.



Ethercard is Not Detected at Boot.

The usual reason for this is that people are using a kernel that does not
have support for their particular card built in. For a modular kernel, it
usually means that the required module has not been requested for loading,
or that an I/O address needs to be specified as a module option.

If you are using a modular based kernel, such as those installed by most of
the linux distributions, then try and use the configuration utility for the
distribution to select the module for your card. For ISA cards, it is a good
idea to determine the I/O address of the card and add it as an option (e.g.
io=0x340) if the configuration utility asks for any options. If there is no
configuration utility, then you will have to add the correct module name
(and options) to /etc/conf.modules -- see man modprobe for more details.

If you are using a pre-compiled kernel that is part of a distribution set,
then check the documentation to see which kernel you installed, and if it
was built with support for your particular card. If it wasn't, then your
options are to try and get one that has support for your card, or build your
own.

It is usually wise to build your own kernel with only the drivers you need,
as this cuts down on the kernel size (saving your precious RAM for
applications!) and reduces the number of device probes that can upset
sensitive hardware. Building a kernel is not as complicated as it sounds.
You just have to answer yes or no to a bunch of questions about what drivers
you want, and it does the rest.

The next main cause is having another device using part of the I/O space
that your card needs. Most cards are 16 or 32 bytes wide in I/O space. If
your card is set at 0x300 and 32 bytes wide, then the driver will ask for
0x300-0x31f. If any other device driver has registered even one port
anywhere in that range, the probe will not take place at that address and
the driver will silently continue to the next of the probed addresses. So,
after booting, do a cat /proc/ioports and verify that the full I/O space
that the card will require is vacant.

Another problem is having your card jumpered to an I/O address that isn't
probed by default. The list of probed addresses for each driver is easily
found just after the text comments in the driver source. Even if the I/O
setting of your card is not in the list of probed addresses, you can supply
it at boot (for in-kernel drivers) with the ether= command as described in
Passing Ethernet Arguments... Modular drivers can make use of the io= option
in /etc/conf.modules to specify an address that isn't probed by default.


-----------

If you want my advice, though, and if it will work with your system, I would
really recommend that you get a PCI card, such as a Netgear FC310 or an
Intel EtherExpress Pro.  We use both of those cards in here and Linux
recognizes them correctly 100% of the time.  The Netgear card is very
inexpensive, also.

You can see the entire Ethernet-HOWTO at
http://www.nospin.org/linux/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO.html.

Drew Dunn


-----Original Message-----

Hello I just installed Corel Linux. The install went great. It did detect
the NIC going to my cable modem, and I can get out to the net.  However the
NIC (a Dlink ISA PNP) that's connected to my internal network will not
detect. Is there any way I can set up so I can get access to the internal
network.


--Patrick Black

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