When I run ifconfig (redhat 6.1 - don't laugh) I get the following spewed back:

<argh>
Nevermind, I can't figure out how to cut & paste (ctrl + C doesn't work).
</argh>

Anyway... it gives me my card stats packets/collisions etc.

Does anyone know how to manually change the card speed from 100mbps to 10mpbs - I'm having a lot of problems running at 100 and dropping the card speed down to 10mbps and half-duplex (on this connection) works for our windows machines.

This machine is for a relative, so once I download open office and some other items it will no longer be on a network (or even connected to the internet for that matter) so I'm really don't expect to spend a lot of time working on it (or anyone for that matter). Just curious if someone knew the answer "off of the top of their heads".

Thanks, - Mike.

Used the "lazy man" method and solved the problem by plugging into the router directly instead of going thru the crappy hub.

Downloaded Open Office and now am having big fun with tar. (-xvzf ohmy!)

Many thanks to everyone for the letters, phone calls and general support.

I did have my finger on the trigger but thought my post was stupid so I refrained.

The best way is to change MII register 4 (your side's advertisement) to 0x0021 This will set your side of the link to only accept 10 Half Duplex in an autonegotiation.
scyld.com has a diagnostic tool called mii-diag that will do this. Some versions of RedHat have an mii-tool utility that will do the same thing.

You can also set your MII control register 0 to 0x0000 which will set your side to 10 half duplex and disable autonegotiation.

The scyld site has some docs on MII as well.

Say what?

I gave the system to my sister - she's never used a computer for anything serious (like work, etc) so I figured she'd adapt to Unix more easily since she hadn't been exposed to Windows too much. She won't be on a network or even connected to the internet.

The state of speed negotiation is held in the MII registers of the Ethernet Physical Interface.
The Control Register, register 0 sets the state of the local Physical Interface or Phy. The Autonegotiation Enabled bit, the 100 Meg bit and the Full Duplex bits are among the configuration bits in register zero. If you set MII register to all zero (0x0000) you are setting it to ignore autonegotiation (since the Autonegotiation Enable bit is clear), 10 Meg (since the 100 Meg bit is clear) and half duplex (since the Full Duplex bit is clear). This will force the NIC to 10 Meg Half Duplex with no negotiation. The other side SHOULD followas it would an older pre-autonegotiation 10 Meg Half NIC.
The other alternative is to continue autonegotiation but to limit the speed/plexes that we support to 10 Meg Half in the MII Advertisement register, register #4. If a NIC is set to support 10 or 100 Full or Half all four bits will be set showing a value of 0x01E1. If you clear all the bits except 10 Half you set it to 0x0021 (0x0101 would be 100 Full only, 0x0081 would be 100 Half only, 0x0041 would be 10 Full only).
mii-tool and mii-diag are tools that allow you to set the values in these registers.

Wow. Cool. Thanks for the info, and it even makes sense.