As I didn't want to hijack Derek's thread I'll start a new one with some reactions from Derek and Tor allready put in. Thanks guys!
My problem is with switching ip-addresses: at home I use static addresses and at work i (want to) use DHCP but forcing a (free) static address to get it going. Switching addresses takes sometimes more than a minute before the nic "catches" the network, and it totally refuses to work with DHCP (says network unreachable). In SuSE 7.3 this worked flawlessly, never had these problems.
Derek: Not a clue. I've never tried it with DHCP. However, the card is a bit fussy to put it mildy. With 7.1, when KDE caused the IPv6 module to be pulled in, the card switched off. Now *that* did take some tracking down. I recommend fiddling lots until it works.
A few days ago i read somewhere (this list?) that 8.0 doesn't pick the right driver for this card and that it should use the xircom_tulip_cb driver. It's right there in /lib/modules/2.4.18-4GB/kernel/drivers/net/pcmcia. My questions are: - Is this correct info, should i be using xircom_tulip_cb instead of xircom_cb - If yes, is this a bug and how do i convince my box it should use the other driver
Derek: As quoted in my post below, yes, switching to the tulip_cb driver fixed all my problems. The xircom_cb driver just doesn't seem quite up to the job just yet. The tweak is simple: go to /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia, and change the very first option from "kernel" to "external". Then restart all the network and PCMCIA services (or just reboot). You might find it all works a lot better then. me: I changed the option in /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia to "external" and it now uses the tulip_cb driver. This didn't help: It still takes quite some time before the nic sees the network and DHCP still doesn't work. Is this beginning to look like a network settings problem? I checked with hwinfo and this is what it now says about the card: 40: PCI 500.0: 0200 Ethernet controller [Created at manual.204] Unique ID: Ddhb.Iew_4A28T26 Hardware Class: unknown Model: "Xircom Cardbus Ethernet 10/100" Vendor: 115d "Xircom" Device: 0003 "Cardbus Ethernet 10/100" SubVendor: 115d "Xircom" SubDevice: 1181 "Cardbus Ethernet 10/100" Revision: 0x03 Driver Info #0: Driver Status: xircom_cb is not active Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe xircom_cb" Driver Info #1: Driver Status: xircom_tulip_cb is not active Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe xircom_tulip_cb" so now both modules are not active, where before only xircom_cb was active. Seems logical because the card now uses the "external" tulip_cb driver. So now i have the next question: Is it possible to try the above mentioned "kernel" xircom_tulip_cb driver? I suspect this won't make much difference, but I still would like to know how to convince the kernel to use xircom_tulip_cb instead of xircom_cb Tor: Modify the relevant line in /etc/modules.conf me: I can't seem to find any reference to PCMCIA and the card or used driver. What should i look for? Anyway, i'm beginning to suspect that it could also be a network config problem. Where can begin to troubleshoot this? I can see that dhcpcd is trying very hard to get an IP from the DHCP-server, but it just times out. Any help will be much appreciated! cheers, Marcel