Networking on Dell Inspiron 8500

christsong84 · Posted: Sun May 11, 2003 11:59 pm Post subject: Networking on Dell Inspiron 8500

ok, I have an old friend with a Dell Inspiron 8500...brand new. While installing gentoo, the system comes up recognizing the ethernet card with dhcp. by the time we type lynx etc, the link is dropped! Anyone else have this problem?

Another thing is does the built-in wireless card work out of the box? what chipset is it? (it's the b/g option)

Thx in advance for your help!
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WaMan · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Jun 2002 Posts: 96

This may be of some help to you:
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/G.Wilford/Inspiron8500/

What's your overall experience like with the 8500 and Gentoo? I've been thinking about getting one.

christsong84 · Posted: Wed May 14, 2003 3:27 am Post subject:

so far I can't get the networking working (acording to the link you refered me to, it needs a special driver...do I just need to cp it to /lib/modules? then modprobe it?

...that's about it so far...that's where we are stuck. (it doesn't help I'm trying to walk someone through this over IM (on his second comptuer))
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mb4guns · Guru Joined: 04 Dec 2002 Posts: 300 Location: Netherlands

I believe this is a broadcom networkcard, check out this post https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=53738
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sys0: Athlon64, Corsair TWINX DDR400 (1024mb), GeForce FX5600 256mb, 2x SATA MAxtor 120gig, Plextor 708a, Zalman cooling, Zalman powered, gnomed
sys1: Dell inspiron 4100 PentiumIII-mobile@1000 512mb ATI Radeon mobility m6 30gig, gnomed

christsong84 · Posted: Wed May 14, 2003 5:25 pm Post subject:

the link says RC4 contains it, yet we are using RC4 and even manually modprobing it didn't work. Any other suggestions?

When we ifconfig at the very beggining of boot, we get an IP address, but by the type we type lynx (right afterwards) it's gone.
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mb4guns · Guru Joined: 04 Dec 2002 Posts: 300 Location: Netherlands

yes very sorry I edited that post, since he was just using an older release. I first posted a little howto on getting the modules and compiling them.

U could try some newer modules, I believe gentoo cd got the bcm4400-1.0.1 while I saw flooting around the bcm4400-1.0.2....
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sys0: Athlon64, Corsair TWINX DDR400 (1024mb), GeForce FX5600 256mb, 2x SATA MAxtor 120gig, Plextor 708a, Zalman cooling, Zalman powered, gnomed
sys1: Dell inspiron 4100 PentiumIII-mobile@1000 512mb ATI Radeon mobility m6 30gig, gnomed

int1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 139

My instructions are at:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=52397

Use the v2.0.0 drivers, they work quite nicely.

int1