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Sindi Keesan wrote:
>
> he threw in a UTP cable for free 

If it is a UTP cross-over cable, you will be able to use
it to connect two network cards.  If it is a straight UTP,
it will only work with a hub.

> half of them being ISA, which the linux HOWTO said to avoid 
> because you need to specify the base address and IRQ in 
> modules.conf.  

That's not correct.  I use ISA network cards often:  insmod, 
ifconfig, no worries.

> I presume I next plug them into the computer one at a time 
> and read dmesg to find out what they are 

dmesg won't register them until *after* you insmod.

> and then look up the correct module somewhere in the HOWTO.  

IMHO the best way to figure out what module an old NIC uses
is to boot the net.i kernel from Slackware.  It does a pretty
good job of identifying NICs.  For ISA NICs, I use net.i from
Slackware 3.2.  For PCI NICs, I use net.i from Slackware 7.1.

When you boot the net.i (b)zimage, you don't need a filesystem.
I think this command will be sufficient:  loadlin (b)zimage
The kernel will crash when it fails to find a root, but it will 
(probably) leave the NIC details on the screen (a few lines up 
from the bottom).

Cheers,
Steven