Quoting Vadim Peretokin [off-list ref]:

Yes, so I believe the problem was that that the rtl8180 driver didn't
see, and claim the card. I believe the command I used to get the
driver to see the card was "sudo echo -n <some adress here>" - I don't
remember it exactly, but if you need it, I can dig it up.

I guess it was adding the PCI ID of the card to the driver using the  
"new_id" mechanism.  Yes, that would be useful.  The ID could be added  
to the driver, so that you would never need to do it again.

Please send the output of "lspci -n"

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin