This one time, at band camp, Johan Ehnberg said: > Hi! > > I'm wondering which modules to load and how, and in which order to get > my Asix AX88190 PCMCIA NIC work on my laptop. Any help is greatly > appreciated! > > I earlier sent a mail with the subject "Installing woody on a Dell > Inspiron 5000e laptop", but got no answer. I thought I was not specific > enough and have looked into this further a lot, now again asking for help: > > What I'm trying to do is basically bring up my network for installing > debian on my laptop. I can load modules but am unable to bring up eth0. > Currently, I'm a bit confused as to which drivers to try (well, I tried > them all, but with no success). > > The card is (according to windows) based on RealTek 8139 chip, but the > (crappy) linux installation instructions on CD say it's an Asix AX88190 > (which might well be an 8139). What is confusing about his is that the > driver on the CD are: Cardbus/rtl8139 driver and PCMCIA/8390 and > (perhaps slightly modified) pcnet_cs. > > On debian-boot I was recommended the 8390 driver for a 8139 PCMCIA card, > but I still was unable to bring up eth0. > > Redhat does this by loading yenta_socket, mii, and 8139too. None of > these are in the debian dist. (Well, 8139too is, but compiled into the > kernel). I earlier had Redhat 7.3 on my laptop, and it worked very well, > but I never got to understand how it did it, as everything was automagic > during the install. > > The 2.4.18 kernel sources say my card is almost compatible with NE2000 > but "because of some misfeatures need an own driver, called axnet_cs" > (freely quoted). > > So I've tried everything available on bf2.4 (as the 2.2 kernel has been > problematic on this laptop). Also, the vanilla disks do not help me as > when I load the 8130too driver it says "network down" when trying to get > DHCP configuration. > > I think you might want to know that I'm not totally familiar with the > differences between CardBus and PCMCIA. OK - I think you might get a little better help on -laptop, but I'll give it a go. Basically, the kernel needs to be able to see your Cardbus bridge (the thing that the PCMCIA cards actually plug into) and then needs to recognize your card. You'll need the cardbus support built into the kernel (which I think it is in debian stock kernels, although I'm not sure - I tend to roll my own) and then you'll need the modules for your card. There are usually two, one with and one without the _cs ending. For me: steve:~$ /sbin/lsmod Module Size Used by Not tainted orinoco_cs 4904 1 orinoco 33544 0 [orinoco_cs] My understanding (admittedly low-end) is that the orinoco driver is written for all cards with my chipset, and the orinoco_cs contains the extra information needed only by the PCMCIA versions of these cards. Once you have the driver level set up, you'll need the pcmcia-cs package installed, as that has all the necessary software to get the card actually recognized and running. I think there's a way to do it without this package, but I could never get it to work, and it runs effortlesly with it. YMMV. After all that, you'll have to set up the networking itself - put the correct information in interfaces, and so on. HTH, Steve -- The little pieces of my life I give to you, with love, to make a quilt to keep away the cold.
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