Hail all gurus, the times are BAD

This msg is important. If you need more details 2 understand please ask. I tried 2 be as descriptive as I could. Thanks in advance 4 your attention :

Guys, it was never so hard as now. Lemme explain myself.

My daugjhter, G, 14 since last december, asked parents & relatives the maximum money they could afford 4 her birthday + Xmas. I forked out the rest.

She got €1000 total and said to me : Buy me the mightiest Linux box that money can buy. I trust you dad. (please) and smiled

She also said "and don't think I will live here forever. I need a box that can act as a server when I will live in me own place very soon and start big LAN parties, maybe a www&mail server".

B4 that, she ALWAYS squatted my own RedHat box to do her 3D games and stuff even though she have a (networked) P150 in her room since ever. Well

The machine arrived 3 days ago, it's a monster.

A7N8X Deluxe mobo, w/ 1x256Mb RAM (supports up to 3Gb!)
Ge-Force4-based ASUS GPU, w/ 128 Mb onboard

Well.

Let's go straight to the problem : Mandrake 9.0 Control center's (MCC) hardware detection tool, witch works pretty well, does not recognize any of the 2 built-in NIC. BTW, it's a 3-COM circuit, and a NVIDIA one. Yes, two different interfaces in the same board. Cool for distinguish between the 2, but harsh for drivers hunting.

Fact is that my time is limited, and G's patience too.

I even tried addiing a good ol' realtek in a PCI slot so I'm sure that the driver module is available 4 it, but HardDrake won't see it either.

Fact is, the HW module of the MCC SEES the integrated NIcs on the mobo, but the network module fails at detecting it when it comes to determining witch type of connection the user wants to setup.

How can I determine witch module is suitable 4 any of those NIC ?

See, when I (BIOS) disable any of the 2 NICs, it works, it stops showing up in the hardware list. BUT when launching the NETWORK part of the MCC, it fails at detecting any of them ! Then it presents me w/ all known modules for NIC, but I tried ALL 3-COM ones, and a few others, but NONE is working ! It fails at loading...

Clearly, the kernel saw them at startup, but cannot load any modul 4 it.

(Also, same problem 4 the sound card, but that's another story.)

Can somebody help a poor harrassed dad ? G is lookin' @ me funny...:-/


thank you all !!

pX

Are you running the latest nForce driver package for linux?

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_nforce_1.0-0248

The other poster is right, I believe, that you need the latest nVidia drivers to get sound. And from this thread

http//www.linuxcompatible.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=187&highlight=a7n8x

one of the most recent posters says that the 3COM driver for that NIC are provided on the CD that comes with the motherboard. Let us all know if this works, as many seem interested in getting this mobo working under linux.

Good luck!