DELL Inspiron 8000 - 3COM 556 internal NIC/Modem

[Manfred Sampl <msampl@gmx.net>]

I'm using a DELL I8K running Woody. The laptop has a internal 3COM 556 
NIC/Modem Combo, which didn't work at all in Linux.

For some reason after compilling and installing kernel 2.4.20 and module 
3c59x the NIC Part of the internal 3COM Card worked.

dmesg:

3c59x: Donald Becker and others. www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
02:06.0: 3Com PCI 3c556 Laptop Tornado at 0xe800. Vers LK1.1.16
07:00.0: 3Com PCI 3CCFE575CT Tornado CardBus at 0x4800. Vers LK1.1.16

ifconfig:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:01:03:87:08:C8
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0xe800

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:50:DA:EB:A5:42
          inet addr:192.168.100.13  Bcast:192.168.100.255
					Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2588 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2986 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:2646105 (2.5 MiB)  TX bytes:256013 (250.0 KiB)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0x4800



In the first days I didn't realize that the 3COM 556 is working, I was 
thinking that my 3Com 3CCFE575CT (Cardbus) does not work anymore... then 
i saw that the 3c556 was registered as eth0 and 3CCFE575CT as eth1, so 
all my settings were wrong. dhclient was listening on the wrong Ethernet 
Card (eth0)

I hope that this information is usefull for somebody... if somebody 
wants to have a look at my kernel config or something else, let me know.

:-) Manfred Sampl

Does anyone has an idea how to test the modem part of the 3c556, or make 
it work?