[PlanetCCRMA] Network problems in Fedora Core 2 on Thinkpad A21p

[Roger B. Dannenberg]

I can't get networking to work (under FC2 from PlanetCCRMA with the default
FC2 kernel on my Thinkpad A21p). The built-in interface is having some
problems (even under Windows), so I've tried two different PCMCIA network
cards:
	Linksys PCMPC100 EtherFast 10/100
	CNET CNF401 100/10
The Linksys card would work for a bit, but after transferring a few
megabytes, it would become inactive. I could manually make it active again
using the System Settings->Network utility, and it would work for another
few megabytes and go inactive again.

The CNET card seems to be recognized as an RTL-8139/8139c/8139c+, but I
can't get it to work. It does not seem to fail consistently. The furthest it
has gotten is to request an IP address using DHCP, but the dialog didn't
complete. I also tried typing in a fixed IP address, and I still can't get a
connection. It's not clear to me whether FC2 has correctly identified the
device or whether it is just guessing. There do not seem to be hardware
compatibility lists for FC2, but I think these are pretty common cards.

Both cards work fine under WinXP.

I've been searching the web for clues, but haven't found anything that
helps. Is there a step-by-step diagnostic procedure? One suggestion was
install SUSE or some other Linux and see if it works, but that's a little
drastic, and I'm not sure that would help, given my goal of bringing up
PlanetCCRMA.