# Asus P4C800 Deluxe - success story

## seatec

Hi!

After fighting with that nic for 2 days I finally go it to work.  It sucks pretty much if you try to install gentoo(== get everything online), and the livecd doesn't support your nic :}

The nic is an onboard gigabit ethernet, the chip is a 3com 3c940.

I booted the livecd, partitioned my hd, and copied a vanilla 2.4.20 kernel via cd to that machine. Then I patched the kernel with that driver:

http://www.syskonnect.de/syskonnect/support/driver/zip/sk98lin_2.4.20_patch.gz

Next I activated support for my nic (networking devices section, 1000 MBit), compiled the kernel, installed grub(I was glad it was already provided with the livecd), and rebooted. After insmod'ing the sk98lin module, eth0 finally was up and running and I could install the rest just like anyone else.

seatec

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## hank scorpio

man tell me how you did this!?!?! especially the "copied the kernel via the cd and rebuilt it bit" there is no source code on this cd.

help dude!

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## seatec

I burned a cd with a 2.4.20 kernel on another computer, mounted it on the new system, extracted it in /mnt/gentoo/usr/src, patched it with the nic driver(the link is in my post), activated the nic in the kernel config, and compiled it. then I installed that kernel using grub(which comes with the livecd; that made me happy;). after I rebooted, I did an "insmod sk98lin" (I think thats the name of the module). next "ifconfig eth0 up". "dhcpcd eth0"(beaucse I run a dhcp server), well, and I was online. then I continued with a standard installation. 

the gentoo kernel sources that I ermerged during the installation contained that driver already btw!

I hope that helped. good luck!

seatec

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## hank scorpio

pretty good move. i ended up just ripping a 3c509 nic from an old dell and going thru the installation with that one.  when i rebuilt the kernel, i embedded the 3c940 driver - as you say, that one works - when i rebooted, everything was fine and no trace of 3c5x9.  thanks for the reply.

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## mass_nerder

I had very similar problems ... ( all of the above && more ) the only difference being is that i have the i875 & its an abit ...... but same chipset pretty much (especially since I'm not taking advantage of ICH5) but I finally (after my 3 days of discouragement -- i decided to search trhough the gentoo mirrors -- actually someone mentioned something similar above -- used a LiveCD in /experimental ... 49MB - 06-15 --??) but finally once the nic came up i went with my paranoid instinct && grabbed almost every kernel available -- and after 2 more days and my choice of 7 different kernels via Grub   :Very Happy:   -- about the only one I could get to work correctly was the mm-sources .....

I' think it was luck ... but when i was doing menuconfig i'd recalled reading somewhere ( kernel.org mailing list archive i beleive ) that someone finally got ALL in order by not including the kernel agpgart (neither module or compiled in) .... and that happened to be the one that worked .......... hope this helps someone ..... I know the board & chipset aren't quite the same but all the formentioned issues are .....

good luck ...... i'm even hoping i get right another time around .... i made a mistake by mis-setting the "make -j#" setting soon after so .... I'm at it again   :Confused: 

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## sdball

Seatec:

How about typing up your solution as a nicely formatted howto? A quick browse of the gentoo forums shows a lot of people having trouble with the onboard NIC.

I am just about to try your solution, as soon as I get this old matshita cd burner working in windows.

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## seatec

Sure I could do that some time these days. 

I my have to mention that I'm NOT running a Gentoo kernel. I'm discussing a bug with the gentoo bugzilla ppl since quite a while already. The gentoo kernel has problems with tcp somehow with my nic, while udp and icmp work. I tried both the -r5 and -r7 kernel. 

I'm running a vanilla kernel from kernel.org, the only patch I applied is the driver for the nic. 

seatec

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## texas1emt

Hey, I followed the same instructions for my 3C940 and installed the syskonnect drivers.  I have the gentoo-sources kernel 2.4.20 running right now...

My problem is that if i run any program inside KDE or twm such as Mozilla, MozillaFirebird, lynx, ftp, gaim or konqueror, i get an immediate kernel panic.  However, i can easily emerge things all the time.  The internet is up and working but somehow everything is locking up when it's accessing the internet for anything not emerge-related.

Any ideas or possible solutions?

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## Mambo

Grab the experimental livecd with 2.6 kernel it has the module on the disk just modprobe sk98lin

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## fRosty1

i downloaded, burned the livecd-2.6_11-29-2003.iso and on bootup i get some or other funky error related to finding the 'image' or something

i'm also having problems gettting this 3c940 nic to be autodetected when i bootup with the pentium4-livecd.  i can't get it to work. 

modprobe sk98lin just reports that the adapter was not found.

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## whissper

Finally got gentoo to boot running 2.4.22-gentoo-r5.

Neither the kernel options 3c200/3c940 or sk98lin are working for me as drivers for the nic. sk98 compile ok but I have unresolved symbols issues. Similar issue with 3c2000.

Any ideas on what I could try?

Thanks

Whissper

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