unable to use ethernet from the LiveCD

[JustAnotherGuy]

Hi,
I installed Gentoo recently, got it all working, and loved My First Linux(tm) system (gentoo). However, it all went horribly wrong a couple of days ago. A friend of mine advised ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" -u emerge ati-drivers ati-drivers-extra (or similar) and after that had finished emerging, being new to Linux I scrwed up my computer a little by overwriting some important config files in /etc/ using etc-update. After having sorted that out my friend suggested getting my whole system to the same level as the new ATI drivers. ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" -u world. I was running this command for a couple of hours, however I then desperatly needed to unplug the computer. So I ctrl-c and poweroff. Wait until the morning and I boot it, ready to continue emerging. however, now I can't get /anywhere/. It crashes on boot, saying:

Kernel Panic - tried to kill init, and won't get past the second dot of 'booting'.

</STORY>

So, assuming that I'm no good with Linux and that I've got some master friends who think they can sort it out using SSH I chove in the LiveCD and boot it up, plug in the ethernet cable to my netgear router and wait to stat sshd.

However, I can't. Moreover I can't connect to the internet through my ethernet cable. It (seemingly) does not believe that it is an ethernet connection. I've tried to tell it by taking the hardware location from Windows and using ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:40:d0:47:10:08 (double-checked) but it claims it is an invalid ethernet address. I can set the IP address and the gateway, etc. but nothing actually connects to the router. e.g. ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.3 sets the IP address to 192.168.0.3, but the router still does not see it as an attached device, nor can I ping the router from the laptop.

So really this is two questions: How can I force the liveCD to wake up and realise that yes, it is an ethernet cable and that it needs to connect, or b) how can I get my actual system to boot seeing as it tries to kill init
and then complains there's no /sbin/init (error on line 3 - whatever that is...)

Well, that's a kind of jumbled post but if anyone needs more info just tell me what commands to use (from the LiveCD) and I'll post up the answers,

Thanks in advance for any help at all,

JustAnotherGuy

[gentoo_dude]

When you type ifconfigy does it show your network card, eth0, or just the loop lo?
If it doesn't, you need to load your module

[JustAnotherGuy]

You're right - it doesn't show up in ifconfig at the start, but... how do I know which module to load?

uname reports using kernel 2.4.25
so: cd /lib/modules/.../net/

I have tried loading each of them, but only the first (arcnet) actually succeeds in loading. e1000 through wan (inclusive) all fail to load up, and none of it gives me any change in the output to ifconfig =(