LM-17 Dimension 8200 LAN Card found, Net connection not.

[DNied]

I just installed Mint 17 today, and it's my first delve into Linux since a failed attempt to get into it back in the early 00's, so far things seem pretty dang cool. However, as I'm working with a Very very old system, and a very very new unfamiliar OS, there are of course quite a number of hangup's that are causing me grief.
The hardware side of things took greater than 8 hours just to get the PC running to start, but I'm motivated, I'm recycling a corner of a dark closet junker PC into a gaming(Minecraft)/movie/music/homework(eventually) station for my 6 y/o, and 8 y/o kids.

From fighting with broken cords, non-readable HDD's, resetting the BIOS with jumpers, and finally just replacing the battery outright, then going through 3 DVD drives, and finally just setting the jumpers just right, I managed to get Mint 17 on this old thing, breathing some life into a REALLY long day's work of troubleshooting one odd problem after another. All of my tech experience comes from personal PC repair and troubleshooting with google in this exact same fashion for the past around 15 years. I know my way around a motherboard more or less, and I can fiddle fart with just about any software when it comes down to it... as long as I have access to google.

Enough with the backstory and skill level though... Just count the first half of this post as my "Hello Forum!"

I've managed to get the OS installed finally, and have finally hit yet another snag that I just can't seem to find any specific information on with google, or forum searches.

Dell Dimension 8200 2.2ghz | 512Mb or 1024Mb RDRam(can't recall offhand, brain a bit fried after all that tech today, but believe it's the latter) | A01 BIOS | Ethernet card lists in

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 inxi -n 

as 3Com 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado]
and in

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 lspci 

as 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 78)
doing a ping test to router results in "Network is unreachable"
I did however have ONE successful ping the very first time I ran Mint after install, but have not since.
It 'feels' like it's just a router issue, as the ethernet card is listing in terminal using those commands, though I am currently using that same router, also via ethernet on the PC I'm typing this on. I have power cycled the router, as well as a factory reset.
Router type is Linksys E1200, through a WiMax Based ISP.
I already swapped out LAN Cards with another card from an other PC, and have had the exact same results.
Any further information, or terminal readouts, please ask away.
There are no connections listed in Network Connections.

I've dug as much as my brain will let me, and gotten as far as I can. I really appreciate the help. Totally stuck on this one.

Thanks a ton in advance!
DNied

[Kalyk]

Hello DNied, welcome to this forum!!

Quite a story and that might be one of the problems.
First thing: I never had a Mint17-installation take more then 15 minutes after booting from the live USB (DVD probably in your case?)(somewhat longer when having to change partitions).
Sometimes when you try to solve to many problems you tend to create the new ones yourself and it is better to start over.
The 3Com 3C905-card is probably the best supported card ever though I have little experience with wired lately.

Do try booting from the live DVD and see if it works then (out-of-the-box, should be no hassle).
And if that doesn't work either then you might want to post the output of

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inxi -Fxz

so we can see what the hardware looks like. And tell us exactly what version of Mint you are using.

One more thing: in older days, perhaps the time om the machine you are using, you sometimes had to do something in the BIOS to get a network card to run, might also be your problem, something with interrupts/IRQ's.

[DNied]

Distro is Linux Mint 17, (LM 17) in the title.
No extra settings for enabling/disabling Ethernet in BIOS, checked for that ages ago under the same hunch.

I'll be trying booting from disk again next, and will post results at that time.

Thanks a ton for the reply! Been hawkeyeing this forum for anything that might be useful, albeit with no "real" Linux experience, so also being really careful with what terminal commands I try.

One friend suggested setting up an alternative DNS to connect through, which is something I've never fiddled with before. So I was curious how I would see my PC's specific IP, as ipconfig doesn't seem relevant with a non-windows system lol. Using ifconfig doesn't seem to provide any legitimate results, just the 127.0.0.1. Though, does that mean that it is indeed seeing the router?

Also, is it possible that the specific card can not support the WiMax based net connection? No clue if that's even relevant, as it's still connecting to that router via ethernet, but the installation tech did say that cable based routers could not support that type of connection, and that I had to use a newer one, which they did provide completely free, so I didn't just take it as "No, buy OUR equipment" from them.

Wish I had net on the thing and could just copy/paste...

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inxi -Fxz returned the following

System:    Host: MintyBob Kernel: 3.13.0-25-generic i686 (32 bit, gcc: 4.8.2)
Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 17 Qiana
Machine:   Mobo: Dell Model: Dimension 8200 Bios: Dell version A04 date: 03/18/2002
CPU:    Single core Intel Pentium 4 CPU (-UP-) cache 512 KB flags (sse sse2)
bmips: 3987.79 clocked at 1993.897 MHz
Graphics:   Card: NVIDIA NV38 [GeForce FX 5950 Ultra bus-ID: 01:00.0
X.Org:1.15.1 drivers (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) FAILED: nouveau Resolution: 1440x900@59.9hz
    GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NV35 GLX Version: 1.5 Mesa 10.1.0 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card: Creative Labs SB Audigy driver: snd_emu10k1 port: ec80 bus-ID 02:09.0
Sound: ALSA ver: k3.13.0-24-generic
Network:    Card: 3com 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] port e800 bus-ID: 02:0a.0
    IF: N/A state: N/A speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac N/A
Drives: HDD Total Size 120.0GB (3.2% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: IC35L120AV V207 size: 120.0GB
Partition: ID: / size 109G used 3.7G (4%) fs: ext4
RAID: No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors: None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?
info:    Processes 124 Uptime 21 min Memory: 236.9/1001.4MB Runlevel: 2
Gcc sys 4.8.2 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4

Whew, that was a fingerfull to type out lol. Pretty sure I could have included only the relevant parts, but - shrug -

Thanks again, will try booting from disk this evening when I have a bit more time.

DNied

[Kalyk]

Seeing this part

Network: Card: 3com 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] port e800 bus-ID: 02:0a.0
IF: N/A state: N/A speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac N/A

suggests there is really no communication whatsoever.
You might try a different cable or a different port on the router.
And sometimes the router needs to be reset.

For the inxi-stuff: better a bit too much information then too little.

And for the Mint version I wanted to know if you use Cinnamon, Mate or something else.