I have just completed an install onto a Samsung P28 laptop, which comes with a BCM5705M ethernet port. I was using the business card pre-R2 installer. I was using expert26 as I was installing unstable.
The installer did not find this ethernet port, and thus I was unable to proceed until I had manually loaded the Broadcom module. Perhaps this chip could be added to the list that is automatically recognised. By the way, when it failed to find the ethernet chip, I went across to another virtual console and tried to issue the lspci command in order to identify which chip this laptop used (as usual it was not listed anywhere on the box or - that I could find - on the web). But the lspci command is not available on the console. Would it be a good idea to include it? There is much more of a problem with PCI chips than with USB or PCMCIA ones, as those items can always (assuming you have one) be attached to another machine in order to find the chip. With PCI chips in desktops and servers you have the option to read the labels on the chips (albeit with a magnifying glass), but on a laptop this option is not open to you as the box is generally very difficult to open. The way that I used to find it was to use Knoppix. It recognised the chip and loaded the driver. As an alternative perhaps for the future when the system can not recognise the chip perhaps the output from lspci should be shown on the installer virtual console. The other thing that I noticed which caused me a small problem is the behaviour with respect to mdetect and read-edid. Both of these are by default installed, but if you do not then install the x-windows-system during the install they get removed without asking the user. Personally I do prefer to do the apt-get installs myself, and when I did install x-windows-system I had to reinstall mdetect and read-edid. I can see the logic of removing these if they are not needed, but should the user (who has effectively said they are going to do this manually) not be asked? For the record, all the other bits and pieces (at least the basic ones) were all correctly recognised and installed. David -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
