There are basically two problems with this board:
- The Realtek 8111D NIC isn't well supported in many (older?) kernels/bundled Realtek drivers
- Once a bad driver has been loaded it puts the NIC into a failure state, one which requires PHYSICALLY DISCONNECTING THE POWER CORD to resolve
I was doing my initial work with TurboPup Extreme, but tested several other variations of Puppy as well. I don't know if the newer distributions work out of the box or not, since I haven't tested them since discovering that disconnecting the power is a key part of the install process.
What I DO know is this, 4.2 puppy derivatives have an older r8169/r8168 version of the Realtek drivers which is incompatible with this card. The latest driver needs to be compiled. If a newer distribution is also incompatible then I'm fairly certain these steps will fix it as well.
Prerequisites:
- devx sfs file for your distribution must be loaded at boot time
kernel header sfs file must also be loaded at boot time - download here: http://bkhome.org/sources/
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http://www.realtek.com/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=5&PFid=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#RTL8111B/RTL8168B/RTL8111/RTL8168%3Cbr%3ERTL8111C/RTL8111CP/RTL8111D%28L%29%3Cbr%3ERTL8168C/RTL8111DP
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tar -jxf r8168-8.xxx.xx.tar.bz2
cd r8168-8.xxx.xx
./autogen.sh
Doing this will remove and backup the existing r8169 driver and install the new r8168 driver. There were some warnings during compilation, but so far they don't seem to be affecting performance.
Then:
- Shutdown the system
Pull the power cord
Reinsert the power and restart the system
I'm not really sure how to make drivers into .pets. If someone points me in the right direction I can create one and attach it.
Read another user's experience on Debian here.