[SOLVED] LAN card not recognized?

I'm almost giving up on this, so I hope someone can help me out...

I can't get access to the network.
It's a wired LAN network via a cable modem to my cable tv's system and the network itself is fine - I'm using it right now on another box to send this.

The test machine is an old Fujitsu laptop, and the card is an IO-Data PCET/TX (whatever that is), but the same card on the same machine worked fine on Ubuntu, #! 9.04.01 and Slitaz, and, get this, even the Statler installer was able to configure the card and network by itself, go online and update apt's data with no problem! During the installer phase I opened another terminal, pinged Google and downloaded a file from the web, to prove it...

But once the system is installed - no network.
Tests:

# 'sudo ifup eth0' gives
'SIOCSIFADDR: No such device'
and similar stuff.

# /etc/network/interfaces looks fine:
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

# /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules had an entry for eth0 with the right MAC address (I looked on the card).

The list of what I've tried is very long, but here's a selection:

# A Network Manager issue? I tried both methods described there, neither worked.

# Tried deleting /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules so it could be regenerated - it wasn't, and still no network.

# Tried disabling, then removing, Network Manager to try to get back to the state the installer was in. No joy.

# I made a copy of the installer system's /etc folder to my personal folder on the hard drive during installation and compared it with the installed system's /etc folder. Tried copying in some files that the installer had that weren't in the installed system. NG

# Finally noticed that the kernel module that this card needs (pcnet_cs) hadn't been loaded. Eureka!
'sudo modprobe pcnet_cs'
But still no network, and lspci doesn't seem to list the card...

# Changed the /etc/network/interfaces entry for eth0 to:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
added pcnet_cs to /etc/modules (this module has worked for this card in the past)
and rebooted. No joy, but this time a bootup message complaining about not being able to bring up eth0.

So that's roughly where I am now. I'm not a hardware guru as you may have guessed, but it looks as if there's a problem getting the card recognised by the system, though it worked in the past, and with the Statler installer, so the solution ought to be simple...

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as without network access I can't update, add apps (htop, less...) or anything.

Last edited by johnraff (2010-04-29 04:34:00)