[Ndiswrapper-general] Solution: wired Realtek 8139

[Alan G. <ala...@gm...>]

Ive got a Toshiba Satellite M55 laptop with a Realtek 8139c wired
ethernet. There is a (apparent) bug in the current Ubuntu default
8139too driver that causes the inteface to die completely on large
file transfers. Some googling indicated that this problem has existed
with this driver since circa 2001.

Toshiba provides a brand new WinXP ndis driver for this intefrace
<http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_dtlViewDL.jsp?soid=1044678&moid=1311519>
and <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=10602178>
states that realtek 8139 works with ndiswrapper, at least for 64bit.

An initial try at installing this indicated that the Toshiba driver
created too many inf files in /etc/ndiswrapper/netopoem, so I hacked
out most of the entries in NetopOEM.inf file that explicitly related
to other hardware vendors. Success ensued.

To install:

Download and unpack modified driver from
http://www.voxpopulimedia.com/pub/ToshibaM55-rtl8139-WinXP-ndis.tar.gz
Unload 8139too
  `sudo rmmod 8139cp 8139too mii`
Install the slightly modified Toshiba 8139 ndis driver
  `sudo ndiswrapper -i ToshibaM55-rtl8139-WinXP-ndis/NetopOEM.inf`
`ndiswrapper -l` should return 'netopoem                driver
present, hardware present'
Then I load the module with
  `sudo ndiswrapper -m`
  `sudo modprobe ndiswrapper`

The dying interface problem is now completely solved. Ive added this
info to http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/List

ndiswrapper rocks!

alan