I burned the Suse 9.1 boot CD and I'm trying to do an installation via FTP. I know that the kernel needs to use the forcedeth module on nForce3 motherboards; I have an MSI K8N Neo Platinum. I've loaded that module and gotten a message that says the module was loaded successfully, but I still get an error when I try to select FTP installation that says something like "No network device found! Please load a network module first." or something along those lines. How can I get this to work? The onboard ethernet is enabled in BIOS, I already checked that. I went through this same thing with Fedora, also, and never managed to get it working. Ideas?

nVidia offers alternative drivers for the nForce chipset on their site. You might try those.

But see, I'd rather not have to burn multiple CD's and do a CD-based install. I'll certainly download the Nvidia drivers anyways if I get a working Linux system, but I'd rather do an FTP install if at all possible. Which means getting the nForce onboard ethernet working right away.

Unless those Nvidia drivers can somehow be loaded before installation starts?

Other distros often have a method of allowing you to install special drivers during the installation process.... but I've never used Suse. Check the docs; maybe you'll get lucky.