No need to spend more money. I just built a new machine with a P5Q Asus board. Using the instructions in the readme on the CD I got the onboard Gigabit Lan working perfectly.
If you are willing to do a little command line work it doesn't take long.
I created a folder named Drivers in my home folder and copied l1e-l2e-linux-v1.0.0.4.tar.bz2 to it from the Asus CD.
cd to that folder and
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tar zxf l1e-l2e-linux-v1.0.0.4.tar.bz2
Now there will be two new folders - in my case the path was home/awc/Drivers/atl1e/src
change directory to the /src folder and
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make install
This gave me an error message - something about "CFlags" and fixing it to use "EXTRA_CFLAGS"
A quick search turned up a suggestion to try
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sudo KBUILD_NOPEDANTIC=1 make install
That did the trick for me and now the driver module has been created and is in /lib/modules/2.6.24-16-generic/kernel/drivers/net/atl1e
2.6.24-16-generic is the kernel that my Hardy install is using - you may have to sustitute if yours is different.
so now
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cd /lib/modules/
sudo insmod ./atl1e.ko
Now the module is loaded into the kernel and the lan works.
Their readme file goes on to give instructions for configuring the interface but my lan was instantly connected - I suppose by Network Manager. I prefer WiCD so later when I installed that I set my preferred config in WiCd.
I hope this makes sense - good luck !
I have to get up early tomorrow so don't think me rude if I don't answer any questions - -I'm sleeping.
PS Since we manually added this module I'm guessing we may have to do this again the next time there is a kernel update so save the instructions (If they work for you)