NIC connection problems

[tacobueno]

Sounds like it may be time to learn to use ethereal (included on the CD) to "sniff the connection" and watch what the NIC and router are saying to each other. That would tell you several things, like does the computer see the ARP packets that should be there every few minutes? Is there any response at all when the computer tries to send a packet? You could also watch the DHCP exchange and see where it goes wrong (by comparing it to an exchange on your good Knoppix system).

hmm, I have just tried messing with ethereal a bit.. and am not too sure what I am doing with it but I have run a few captures through capture options on eth0 (and the psuedo-device), such as sticking in the mac address on the first ethernet address option and a few others to see if results came up.. and the results on everything I have run pretty much show no communication with the router, I see outgoing stuff like asking who is 192.168.0.1 with no replys (i get replys on this system just fine), and my dhcp discovers come back with offers on this system as well but nothing comes back on the problem system.. I have also run windows on the problem system just to make sure the ethernet still worked and it worked just fine, connected without any problem.. so the ethernet is fine, the router and modem are fine, the cords are fine.. the systems seem all fine as far as hardware.. just one connects when running knoppix and one does not.. and I guess I'm stuck there and don't know enough about linux OS's to figure out how to solve the problem....

[rusty]

I'm not sure whether you can do this, but is it possible to plug into your cable/dsl modem directly? Get the router out of the picture for a bit. See if you can obtain an address from the internet or some other dhcp server.

The othe rthings that you've probably tried are things like removing, reinserting the module: modprobe -r via-rhine, then ; modprobe -v via-rhine.

Booting with some cheatcodes: knoppix nopcmcia, nousb etc. on the theory that some conflict exists between the hardware drivers on that board.

Trying an older knoppix with the 2.4 kernel.

Other distros that sometimes have better hardware detection: mepis, ubuntu, kanotix.

The irc channel #knoppix has people that can sometimes help too.

[tacobueno]

I have finally narrowed it down and found a solution, cheat code noapic solves all my problems... so now I am curious.. what exactly IS noapic/apic??? and what does it do?? googling it I only find forum threads of people disabling it to fix similar problems but no explanations to just what it is..

anyway, thanks for all the suggestions and help