D-Link DFE-530TX: the -REAL- driver

[Raphael Bustin <rafeb@channel1.com>]

I found a very interesting page on D-Link's website:

<http://support.dlink.com/faq/view.asp?prod_id=487>

wherein a clue may perhaps be found.

It seems that Revisions A, B and C of this board
(the DFE-530TX+) do indeed use rtl8139.o from the
standard distribution.

However:  For Rev. D1 and D2 of this card, the web page
says, quite specifically and in no uncertain terms:

  "DFE-530TX+ revision D1 and D2 must
  have the driver compiled from the floppy."

Indeed.

This evening I gave up on this debian installation and
decided to rebuild it from scratch.  Interestingly
enough, the rtl18139 driver fails to install even during
the initial OS setup.

This would explain a lot.  It seems I either need to
get a less-exotic NIC, or deal with building this
module from source.


rafe b.