1 So for those of us with no idea what you're saying, can you maybe put "good" "bad" or "indifferent" ratings on these posts so we can respond sympathetically or enthusiastically as the case requires? :-)

2 Ditto what she said....

3 I'll hazard that this is an "indifferent" post. Pixy had to buy new hardware (boo!) but has stuff working now (yay!).

4 That's about right

5 For a geek, the opportunity to go into the computer store and buy something is never a cause for "boo!" Hell, my wife won't let me go into the computer store alone "just to check prices".

As for the nic problem. I assume the new card is tulip compatible, right? How about the old one? I found an oddity with some standard cards. By default the use a random port number, which can be a problem. I couldn't get SuSE 9.0 to get the nic to work because it couldn't find the correct port value. I suppose some good guessing on my part would have done the job. Some cards come with a configuration program that allows you to set the port to a fixed value. Unfortunately, these are usually DOS or (worse) Windoze programs, so it's a pain to use them.

BTW, what level RAID?