Jarrod Trainque

26May

Linksys Ether16 LAN Card not totally compatible with Linux

Posted 6 years, 3 months ago - 3 comments

This weekend I installed Red Hat Linux on an old desktop I had lying around. The install was relatively easy… After an hour or so I had Linux 8.0 running on my machine, with no noticeable issues.

That is, until I tried to access the internet. The ethernet card I had in my PC, a Linksys Ether16 LAN card I bought while in college, wasn’t being recognized by Linux. I could add the hardward, but Linux wouldn’t let me “activate” it. I tried various IRQ, MEM, & IO settings, but it still didn’t work. I searched around in some Linux forums looking for an answer, but didn’t find anything that seemed specific to my problem.

I eventually made my way to the Linksys Linux information page, only to find this:

Ether16 LAN Card

If you have the plug-and-play version of the Ether16 (released in mid-1997), install the card in a DOS workstation and run its Setup program to take the card out of plug-and-play mode before beginning the Linux installation–the card won’t work properly with Linux while in plug-and-play mode.

This card will work with the ne driver (ne2000) in most distributions using Kernel 2.x

Damn. The only other computer I have is a laptop running Windows XP, and since it’s a laptop I can’t simply throw in the ethernet card to disable Plug and Play. If only I knew this prior to installing Linux.

So now I’m left with a few options:

  • buy a new, non-plug-and-play ethernet card. Sortof a waste of money, especially since I have an ethernet card that should work.

  • re-install windows (i.e. a DOS environment), install my ethernet card, change the settings on the card to diable plug-and-play mode, and re-install Linux. A pain in the ass, but at least it would save me the trouble of buying more hardware.

  • Find someone who’ll let me install my ethernet card on their machine temporarily simply so that I can make changes to the ethernet card’s settings.
An additional problem is that I’m not 100% sure I have the Linksys Setup disk required to change the settings. Argh…

If you know something about this, I’d love to hear some suggestions of what next steps I should take.

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3 Comments

  1. Comment by erik — June 10, 2004 @ 2:31 am

    try mepis linux out – the beta – though it’s being mirrored on a different site right now due to incomplete isos being distributed – automagically configures my audigy card. It didn’t used to with the last stable release. as a live cd it’s a good thermometer for what is linux compatible or not. I’m not sure what card you have on it but it may be that the 2003 stable release would actually work.

  2. Comment by Jarrod — June 9, 2004 @ 8:14 pm

    update: I ran down to Microcenter and bought an ethernet card for about $10. Surprisingly, Microcenter was selling ethernet cards for as little as $.99, so the fix was cheap.

    The LinuxBox is online, and as far as I can tell, the soundcard is the only non-functioning component. I have no idea why the soundcard isn’t working. I suspect that the soundcard I have just might not be supported by Linux.

  3. Comment by erik mallinson — June 9, 2004 @ 4:52 pm

    i’ve got ethernet cards coming out of my ears, courtesy of fellow bostonites and their computer dumping ways.

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