ok,
I took the last couple of days to troubleshoot this issue.

its OS specific.

Basically, the motherboard (an ECS Elitegroup k7vta3 pcb version 8.0) will not 
work properly with the lan in the following OS(s):

1. linux (any Flavor)
2. BSD (any flavor)
3. Sun OS for x86

The board does work properly (and I get full 100BaseT capability on the built 
in lan) with windows 98, windows 2000 and windows XP.

This appears to be the only issue (the built in lan). Just what the hell if 
going on around here?


anyone have any clues as to how to correct this?

Technomage