[KLUG Members] installing new driver

[Buist Justin]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: bill [mailto:bill@billtron.com]
> Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 4:32 PM
> To: members@kalamazoolinux.org
> Subject: [KLUG Members] installing new driver
> 
[snip]
> On Linux, my understanding, if I may use that term so 
> loosely, is that the
> drivers somehow "already exist" in some occult location 
> related to the OS.  I
> was thinking of using that auto-detection program that occurs 
> during Linux boot
> but...

Yeah.. the manufactuer's will sometimes take the open-sourced driver that somebody completely unrelated to their company wrote and provide you an outdated version of the .c code on the floppy disk to make you think they care.  I actually saw one NIC maker go so far as to remove Donald Becker from the credits. Actually.. they just commented out the printk() w/ his name and replaced it with the company name.

99.9% of the time that disk is useless... throw it away.
 
> The driver that came with the card requires that the driver 
> for linux (2.4
> kernal) be compiled.  They even provide a batch script for 
> doing so, but, alas,
> the batch script came back with:
> 
> gcc: command not found

Probably don't have any of the C development utilities installed.
 
> So, my questions are:
> 
> How can I find out if I have the latest version already?  
> This is RH 7.3.

I would doubt that the driver has updated much since 7.3 came out.. if any.
 
> How do I compile this driver without gcc?

A hex editor and a couple of manuals, along with a -lot- of free time :)
 
> Can I assume that the new-hardware-detection program that 
> runs during boot will
> allow me to add this latest driver and that this detection 
> program is the proper
> place to do so?


try a 'modprobe 3x59x' as root from the command prompt.  If I'm not mistaken that's the module for your particular card.

Justin