I've recently had to replace a hard drive and not having an old windows xp to hand i've decided to install damn small linux - not.
Am currently having problems connecting to the internet using the ethernet cable directly to my realtek router (am sure that the hardware is ok as this configuration was working under xp)

if it helps Control panel->Netcardconfig says no supported network cards are found

Control panel-> PPOE says no working ethernet card found

and system stats seems to recognize Realtek|unknown device
and driver: unknown

help please!