Toshiba Satellite L650 - 14F : Experiences?

Question

Hi, I just bought new laptop recently. Because of my job I had to make a quick start so I installed win 7 on it etc... Now I have a little bit of time to fiddle around with linux, so I thought of installing Arch distro. Did it a few times on a virtual box, but from my experience virtual box is just too idyllic environment to actually simulate real problems one can encounter during installation e.g. internet access.
Satellite L650 really have great performances, and I'm really satisfied with how it works, but I had problems connecting to internet when I fresh installed win7. Usually windows handle this automatically when I connect with cable, and then wireless drivers are downloaded etc... but I had install drivers to be able to connect over cable at first place.
So, because of that, I'm wondering if anyone had any experience with Satellite L650, and connecting him to internet or any other problems while installing arch? Also, I'd like to keep windows on my pc. I currently have one and only partition of ~500 gigs with windows on it, so Is it advisable to prepare partitions with windows partitioner in advance to prevent any "whoops, I accidentally erased my windows partition" problems?
(Yes, yes, I saw wiki on how to configure network, etc.. but I'd like to skip that step if possible )

Answer 1

ewaller wrote:
whell, I would like to, but, is there any other way to copy outpout, except retipeing it,
Okay, fair enough.  What I really need is the 32 bit number that identifies the manufacturer and product of the wired Ethernet control.  Here is how I did it on my system:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
04:00.0 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. SD/MMC Host Controller
04:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technology Corp. Standard SD Host Controller
04:00.3 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. MS Host Controller
04:00.4 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. xD Host Controller
ewaller@odin:~ 1006 %lspci -n | grep 03:00
03:00.0 0200: 10ec:8136 (rev 02)
It is the 10ec:8136 that identifies my card.
It is good that your system identifies the NIC in lspci.  That ifconfig -a does not show it says that the kernel could not find a module to support your interface.   You will need to find the correct driver for the NIC (based upon that 32 bit signature), and install it such that the kernel can find it.
Once we find it, getting it into your system is another matter.  You said USB is not working.  Can you boot from the hard disk or must you boot from CD?  If you can boot from Disk, can you mount the CD?  That might be a way to import the needed driver.
ok, so if I'm correct, this is it:
for 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8152 v1.1 Fast Ethernet (rev c1) after running lspci -n | grep 02:00 I got this:
02:00.0 0200: 1969:2060 (rev c1)
and for 03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Device 4727 (rev 01)
03:00.0 0280: 14e4:4727 (rev 01)
hope you can make something out of this, btw, wired connection is my priority now so I hope you can help. thanks!