when an os says “alpha” i never expect wireless support. ironically, i may have to rely on what support haiku has for wireless to get it on the network.
i set up another machine- the laptop wasn’t likely to boot, i looked for a way to turn of pnp but i saw no such setting. everyone was so friendly and helpful that i decided to keep trying, dug a machine i really didn’t want to mess with (not to mention i think i tried it before!) out of storage and stuck a drive in it. anyboot is booting; i still got to try the no pnp tip on this one, so thanks again.
in short, it’s running haiku though ifconfig can only see loopback- no eth anywhere.
i also looked at system, then prefs, network- it can’t find any devices to setup either. any networking suggestions welcome, obviously i’ll try playing with some other things, check out the user guide, and see what else i can make this thing do. thanks, everybody. (oh and python is working great, i’m thrilled it’s on here.)