Reverging from NIC to MB ethernet chip

I've got a working system (Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard; debian
Etch operating system) in whuch there is an Intel NIC. I would like to
remove the NIC and make use of the MB ethernet chip instead, but I run
into trouble.

The motherboard has two CAT connections, and I'm using the one with
the LED lit.

In BIOS setup, there's a section that reports LAN cable status. When
I'm tring to use the MB ethernet chip, I get N/A in all cases. When
I've got a NIC plugged in the second stanza I get:

1-2 Normal N/A
3-6 Normal N/A
4-5 Short 3.2M
7-8 Short 3.2M

Not sure what this means. Why different?

In BIOS secion, OnBoard devices configuration, I have a reference to
OnBoard GBE LAN1. This is disabled when I'm using a NIC
successfully. When trying to use the MB chip, I tried both enabled and
disabled without success. Is this supposed to enable the OnBoard
ethernet chip?

When I boot without the NIC, the driver for the MB chip loads:

# dmesg | grep forcedeth
forcedeth.c: Reverse Engineered nForce ethernet driver. Version 0.56.
forcedeth: using HIGHDMA
eth0: forcedeth.c: subsystem: 01043:8141 bound to 0000:00:13.0

However, I get:

Listening on LPF /eth0
Sending on LPF /eth0
Sending on Socket/fallback
HCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
...
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
done.

I should get:
...
DHCPREQUEST on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.111.1
bound to 192.168.111.2 -- renewal in 32497 seconds.
done.

In /etc/network/interfaces, I use eth1 with a NIC and presume that
when I remove it, I need to change this to eth0. However, neither
option allows DHCPDISCOVER to get a lease.

What step am I missing in the move from a NIC card to the MB chip?

--

Haines Brown, KB1GRM



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