NIC newbie- onboard adapter help needed

[nishtya]

Hi. I have been running linux for awhile and presently have two installs on this PC. Both Kanotix right now, one 2.4 kernel, the other 2.6. I have just gotten into this century and have gotten cable. My board is an ECS K7S5A with onboard adapter. The driver that is working here in windows is SIS900. But neither of my linux installs recognizes an adapter - the network configuration utility on both says no. I am googling but I am impatient and also pretty pathetic in the compiling drivers dept. I know I saw others with this board in linux forums and would appreciate any help you can provide. The cable modem is a Motorola surfboard SB4100 which the cable company calls a "GL" I have no clue why But I think I need to get the adapter problem taken care of before I start worrying about the modem And sad to say it was a breeze with windows 98, I didn't even need the cable company's software <shudder-no way> just the mobo CD. Of course I am probably being hacked a mile a minute

[nishtya]

poor form to reply to my own post, but progress I have made though not cured by a long shot

googling came up with mostly problems long ago for this adapter and most saying the cure would come with kernel 2.2.20 when SIS900 would be supported. So, I figured the bugger had to be on here. I modprobed sis900, ran network config and voila. I am here. But if I reboot I am not. And have to go through it all again.

This is a hard drive install. What do I need to get this to set permanently? Googling is bringing me overload info on this and I need something specific to debian methinks as well as I don't seem to have the same files in the places they are mentioning in posts on the net.

[shah]

I don't know about knoppix because I'm using kanotix right now. But in kanotix, sis900 module is include. Check in /lib/modules/2.6.6-kanotix-3/kernel/drivers/net/sis900.ko.
If you are using kanotix, run modprobe sis900 or insmod sis900.
On motorola surfboard, one thing you should look into is your network card netmask, sometimes it won't use the default 255.255.255.0. You could try changing to something like 255.255.0.0.

[nishtya]

well everything is working peachy now until I reboot then I have to go through the whole thing again. I could add sis900 to modules and that should start up but how to get the netcardconfig to stick? When I run it asks if I want dhcp broadcast, I say yes, it goes okie dokie about eth0 and poofs. Then I have connection but on reboot nothing. So what to add to what init file?

[nishtya]

once again ascending to new heights of bad form by replying to my own post.
But I found a solution and so for the next poor slob:
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...+netcardconfig

now why didn't I think of that they have to be kidding, how would average jill such as myself figure out something like that? And the answer wasn't quite that pat for me, netcardconfig did not yield a line such as: ifconfig blah blah. It just gave me a "auto lo eth0". Something more along the lines of sensorsdetect where they actually tell you to copy the darn line might be more helpful. But you still have the problem of every distro needing it pasted someplace different.

Thanks shah and tortele