Ethernet not working, a weird one!

[Tony Baechler]

Hi,

Is your Gentoo using udev?  I personally prefer and recommend Debian 
because it's a lot easier.  If your Gentoo is very old, udev isn't the 
problem, but I would check that first.  I posted very detailed 
instructions on how to solve the problem with udev.  It's in the Speakup 
archives, but basically it likes moving the eth0 to eth1.  You have to 
delete the rules that make it do that and you should be fine.  Failing 
that, I would buy an Intel E1000 card.  It's about $35 but gives very 
much better performance and is plug and play so it's easier to set up.  
I used the exact same 3Com card in a server for years and all my 
headaches went away with the Intel card.  If you can confirm that udev 
is definitely not the problem, I don't know.  You shouldn't need to 
recompile the kernel just to use a different driver though.  I would 
definitely look at Debian or grml, especially since you should still 
have hardware speech.