Sometimes you might have problems determining whether your network cards are working or not, so the following may be of use.
ISA Cards
If the card is an early one with jumpers, you need to use those jumpers to configure the io and irq. Most later cards are software set using a dos configuration utility which comes on a disk with the card. You need to run this utility and choose "jumperless" mode - plug and play will not work. Additionally, on some types of cards you might have to manually select the media type in the setup program (10base-T or thinnet/coax) and not rely on auto media sense.
Of special note is the 3c509 and 3c509B cards - To disable PNP before using them with freesco you need a recent etherdisk (driver disk) from the 3com website, and boot up with one 3c509(B) fitted at a time, if you have more than one card - and run the pnpdsabl.bat file, shut down, boot up again, and then enter the 3c5x9cfg utilty and configure an io and irq setting. Repeat for a second and third 3c509. Note: contrary to most ISA cards, the 3c509(B) is autodetected in freesco, and the io and irq settings you enter in freesco setup are ignored.
The newest version of the 3c5x9cfg utilty has been reported to be able to do multiple cards. While this option may be available, it is recommended to install the cards one at a time.
PCI Cards
Unlike ISA cards where the io and irq are configured by jumpers or a soft-set utility, PCI cards are configured by your motherboard BIOS, and if the settings in the BIOS are incorrect freesco cant access the card. Because there are so many different types of BIOS out there, the following advise is only general. If there is a PNP setting, (called "PNP OS" with an option of yes or no in an Award BIOS) you *must* set it to No. Other BIOS's may have different wording, so you may have to experiment. Symptoms of this setting being wrong are the card isnt detected at all, or its found on an invalid irq like 0 or 255.
Even if you dont have the correct driver installed for a PCI card, you should be able to see it listed in the PCI device table with
cat /proc/pci
And you should see a valid irq being assigned. If you dont, go back to your BIOS and check things. If it looks ok here but freesco doesnt seem to be finding the card, you then need to look at finding the correct driver and installing it.
For both PCI and ISA cards the following commands are also useful:
cat /proc/ioports
cat /proc/interrupts
(Shows io and irq assignments of successfully loaded drivers)
dmesg | grep eth
(Shows messages related to the network cards filtered from dmesg. This will show you which card received what eth name.)
Important note
It's not possible to guarentee that cards will be detected in the order you entered them in setup, depending on the types and combinations of network cards you have. Dont be surprised if you find the cards in a different order to what you expected. The first card to be detected is labeled eth0, the second eth1, and so on. In advanced settings you can specify the interface names for each network. For example in ethernet router mode, "1st network" must be the one going to the internet, normally eth0, but if the network card you want to use to connect to the internet stubbornly insists on being detected as eth1, you can change the interface name for 1st network to eth1, and second network to eth0, which achieves the same functional result.