Balky Netgear FA311 ethernet card

[Rick]

I have a very small home network consisting of two computers connected 
by ethernet via a hub.  One computer is currently Windows only, and the 
other is a Debian/Windows dual boot.  The dual boot machine is an 
elderly Pentium Pro system with the Netgear FA311 card.  This goes on a 
PCI bus.  I regularly use the network with Windows on both sides, so I 
know that the hardware is functional.  The Debian system is woody with 
the 2.4.18-bf2.4 kernel.

I am a Linux ethernet newbie, so bear with me.  I have spent a good 
chunk of the last week trying to get this network up in Linux, including 
reading the ethernet and networking how-tos, as well as "Running Linux" 
and a book called the "Suse Linux Network" (which is still somewhat 
relevant to Debian).  Although the driver (natsemi from scyld.com) seems 
to find the card, I have come to suspect that the card is deactivated 
somehow in the early boot process and remains deactivated.

To explain further, my hub has an indicator light for each input.  As 
soon as my dual boot machine gets power, the indicator light on the hub 
comes on.  For a windows boot, the light stays on.  For a Debian boot, 
the light comes on when the machine powers up, but then turns off early 
in the kernel boot sequence.  No matter what I do with the software, the 
light never comes back on, and this is consistent with the card showing 
that it has not transmitted or received any packets.

During the Debian boot, the light turns off by the time the boot 
sequence is doing some timeouts on my SCSI interface.  There is no 
mention of the card during this early part of the boot sequence, but it 
does come up in the kernel messages (with no obvious problems) when the 
natsemi ethernet driver runs as a module.  The scyld site mentions 
loading a pci-scan module before the natsemi module.  I am not sure what 
the pci-scan module does (it is not in the debian woody distribution, 
although natsemi is), but I have tried it and it does not cause the 
ethernet hub light for the ethernet card to turn on. 

I theorize that the kernel is probing the PCI bus and doing something to 
the card right at the start of the boot.  I can provide much more detail 
on what I have done if it would help.  Are there any kernel 
configuration settings that could be causing this problem (and how do I 
check them?).  Would greatly appreciate any assistance.

Rick

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