Why cant I make my laptop ethernet cards recognise 10Mbs?

[phil prentice]

Thanks, I will try ethtool.  By the way I needed 10Mbps because I'm trying to 
communicate with an old system which only supported 10.  I just dont 
understand why one laptop works fine and the other does not and was wondering 
if there was some standard reason why this might be happening.

Thanks again
Phil

On Tuesday 11 December 2007 14:09, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> phil prentice wrote:
> > Hi
> >   I have got two laptops. If I connect one of them up to a 10mbs ethernet
> > connection; it recognises the connection immediately and I can happily
> > transfer files immediately.  However my second laptop just will not work
> > at 10Mbs.  100Mbs is not aproblem, but 10Mbps is simply not recognised.
> > Initially I thought it might be the on-board network card, so I bought a
> > netgear FA511 adaptor in the hope that that would work ok.  It has
> > exactly the same problem.  Both the laptops are running Fedora-6 ( I
> > would update the failing one if I thought that it would make a
> > difference).  The failing laptop simply does not see the 10Mbs signal.
> >
> >   The laptop that works has a Broadcom coporation BCM4401-B0 adaptor.  I
> > tryed the failing laptop with the onboard SIS900 PCI fast ethernet
> > adaptor and the netgear 10/1000 mbps fast ethernet adaptor (FA511).  Both
> > refuse to detect 10Mbps.  I tryed setting the speed directly, but it did
> > not seem to help (mii-tool).  Has anyone got any ideas as to why this
> > laptop does not detect 10Mbps (100Mbps is fine) or what I might try to
> > fix the problem.  I cant really believe that both these adaptors would
> > fail especially the netgear one.
> >
> > Thanks for any help
> >
> > Phil
>
> You may want try ethtool instead of mii-tool and see if that works.
>
> Mikkel