Missing Network support: was Re: Booting with different kernels -- what am I missing?

[Doug Sutherland]

 > I compiled the driver, 3c59x directly into the kernel.
 > Doing a modprobe 3c59x returned, as I expected, a module not found error

Well if you compiled it into the kernel then there is no module to probe,
so that's not surprising. However, the kernel should show some message at
boot when it finds the hardware. After booting do a dmesg | more and look
for the ethernet stuff.

 > running ifconfig eth0 as root tells me that the ethernet interface could
 > not be open. Is this kernel bad for Dell laptops?

Hmmm 3c59x is very common hardware. I'd be really surprised if you can't
make this work

Does lspci show your ethernet card?
Try ifconfig eth0 down
then
ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.1 network 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0
then ifconfig eth0
Still no go?

   -- Doug