3c509b is not detected. the installation does not ask if the box will be on a network either. installation does proceed normally. after running linuxconf, the nic is still not available to the os. rh 5.2, mandrake 6.0,caldera 2.2, and ibm pc dos 2000(7.x) nic detection/manual entry and usage does work on the box with this card. since this is our standard nic for our company, i need a work around (driver, etc) that is supported by rh-rtp. several around work are waiting for this before purchasing 6.1. the nic is set to dos and not for windows pnp.
The answer is in #7088. For According to jturner, these older ISA NICs are not aggressively recognized in RH 6.1 (even though this same card was recognized in prior versions through 6.0). The workaround I used was a bit awkward. First, add kernel support for your card with "insmod 3c509". Then, run "netconfig" to provide configuration information. You might also need to edit /etc/resolv.conf (additional name servers, search domain...) and /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 (especially to add GATEWAY info). This should get the NIC working properly. HOWEVER, the problem I had was getting the 3c509 support added at boot time. Eventually, I gave up on finding the right way, and edited /etc/rc.d/init.d/network and added the "insmod 3c509" (with path, I think it's /sbin) in the "start)" section of the script. (You can't put it in rc.local, because that's run AFTER /etc/rc.d/init.d/network during a normal boot).