SMSC91C111 woes

I am currently trying to use the SMSC91C111 chip on my board. I have connected nearly every digital interface pin into the Stratix just as was done on the Nios II Stratix Development Board from Altera. When looking at their FPGA code I don't notice that they do much of anything with the pins that don't connect to the Avalon function. The only two other mentioned pins are ADS and AEN which are grounded. All other pins appear to be input tristated. After reading through the forum it seems many people have made this chip work. When I run the board it is unable to connect to the switch I am using. Any suggestions as to the proper thing to do with these pins and why linux can't use the chip.