I was a Windows user and my techie roommate introduced me to BeOS and I love it. The thing is, I absolutely need to connect to my college's network and I can't seem to do it. It recognizes my network card (3Com 3C920) but it seems to have trouble connecting to DHCP (it returns an IP address of 0.0.0.0, which seems terribly wrong).

Any suggestions???

When you say it recognizes it do you mean in the devices panel? I think in network you need to give it some sort of correct IP address and options and restart it. Get the 5.01 and 5.03 patches or your network will be wide open. I understand that you may have done this already.

Well, the issue is that the network at my school has variable IP addresses, so it is impossible for me to specify one. In the devices menu it lists an ethernet card, but has no specific information on it, but I can't seem to locate a driver for it, so I assume it is supported.

I don't recon I know what the trouble is. Can you open a terminal and ping 127.0.0.1? Can you find another IP address on the lan and ping it? Does the campus use DCHP or do you need a proxy IP address and port number to point the browser to? If you know the computer name you may be able to ping the domain name and get an address in return.

The campus uses DHCP and yet BeOS can't seem to coerce an IP address from it automatically. I have tried logging on to Windows, leasing a temporary IP address, copying down all the info, and then rebooting into BeOS and copying all the info into the appropriate fields in "Network" and then clicking Restart. But nothing. no network access at all. My roommate has tried random IP addresses in the "Network" window, as well, but none have allowed internet access. I will test the pings as you suggest and update.

Update--I updated to 5.0.3. And the ping to 127.0.0.1 failed: "Ping timed out". Still nothing.

Now we know were them rabbits live.
What I understand is that 127.0.0.1 is a good way to test that your NIC card is installed and configured with a TCP/IP protocall (can't spell) That it is a local loopback sort of. That tells us that your card is where you need to start looking. Things to try might include Disable Plugged up Play, Move the Nic card to a different slot. Check config in Bios or from BeOS (like hardware?? or something from start tab)(can't remember the window just now) Check that the nic card is supported. Borrow an old 10base card or buy one that is supported. You might check Frizbe.net for the card support or Bebits.com for help.

when you boot up, do you get a message that the card did not init?