The first thing to check, if you haven't already, is to make sure that the USB support is working. Laptops use more varied chipsets than desktops and incompatibilities with things like USB are more likely. The simplest way of doing this is to run "lsusb -v | less" and look for a description that suggests that it is your USB Ethernet adapter. If you get that, then the USB drivers are most likely working fine.
The pegasus.o module is included in DSL (/lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/usb/pegasus.o), but if you can plug the USB-Ethernet adapter into another Linux PC with a distro where it works, you could run "lsmod" and see whether it indicates that other modules are also required for it to work. I found that was the case with some PCMCIA WiFi cards on another Linux distro, more than one module had to be explicitly loaded.
In DSL on this old laptop I can use USB pendrive to mount it, so the USB drivers are working fine.The pegasus.o module is included in DSL (/lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/usb/pegasus.o), but if you can plug the USB-Ethernet adapter into another Linux PC with a distro where it works, you could run "lsmod" and see whether it indicates that other modules are also required for it to work. I found that was the case with some PCMCIA WiFi cards on another Linux distro, more than one module had to be explicitly loaded.
Since I open this thread here, I installed a Debian Sarge on this old laptop, and it can uses the USB Ethernet adapter.
When I run on Debian Sarge
Code:
lsmod
I get this line among others:Quote
pegasus 22152 0
usbcore 104164 4 ohci_hcd,pegasus
I admit, since I installed Debian Sarge on this old laptop, I do not have installed on it DSL, although I created - during Debian installation - a 60 MB ext2 partition for DSL frugal installation.usbcore 104164 4 ohci_hcd,pegasus
I am a fraid to install DSL now because it will change the Grub MBR out there.
Can I avoid that, namely, can I install DSL so so I skip the grub installation when doing DSL frugal install?
And after I have installed DSL, can I just run in Debian Sarge the grub-install so it detect DSL too?