CentOS - Feb 2007 - R1000 Driver for RTL8110SC NIC on Biostar I945G-M7

Executive Summary: Realtek has an r1000 driver for the rtl8110sc NIC at
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads

I've posted this in the forums but it looks like all the action for CentOS
really happens here on the mailing list. Plus I hope this might help some
other lost soul since google failed to connect this motherboard to *any*
mention of the r1000.

I thought I found a great little motherboard in the Biostar I945G-M7 V.2 for a
new HD-capable MythTV frontend box I'm putting together. Imagine my dismay
when the CentOS 4.4 installer did not recognize the on-board NIC.  I haven't
had this happen for *years* when installing on new hardware.

Biostar's documentation (*and* their tech-support!) states that this M/B has
an RTL8100 on-board. However, once I installed CentOS from DVD, 'lspci
-v'
revealed:

02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169SC
Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp: Unknown device 2304
Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 209
I/O ports at de00 [size=256]
Memory at fdeff000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

Once I compiled and installed the r1000 on kernel 2.6.9-42.0.8, loading the
driver yielded:

eth1: Identified chip type is 'RTL8110SC'.
eth1: r10001.05, the Linux device driver for Realtek Ethernet Controllers at
0xde00, 00:e0:4d:04:e8:c3, IRQ 209
Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter
Driver version:1.05
Released date:2006/10/25

I checked another host that has a more recent 2.6.18.6 kernel and confirmed
that it does *not* have the r1000. So I guess the r1000 isn't part of the
kernel yet.

You can get the r1000 at:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=13&PFid=4&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

Some direct links:

ftp://202.65.194.211/cn/nic/r1000_v1.05.tgz
ftp://210.51.181.211/cn/nic/r1000_v1.05.tgz
ftp://209.216.61.149/cn/nic/r1000_v1.05.tgz

Kirk Bocek