noapic causes pump (dhcp init) to fail on new sempron/ati pc

I recently bought a new PC to replace my circa 1998 web server. The new PC is a Powerspec 5500 with an AMD Sempron CPU and ATI Radeon 200 chipset on an ECS RS482-M754 motherboard that can also support an Athlon64 CPU. It cost $250 after rebates from Microcenter. More details are here:
http://powerspec.com/systems/system_...selection=5500
Before clobbering XP Home (and invalidating the warranty) I thought I'd use Knoppix to see how well the new PC worked with Linux and try to backup the disk image. It booted just fine, and networking worked just fine (browsing, samba, ssh). But there were some troubling things. A single key press frequently generated multiple KeyPress events and the system's clock was twice as fast as reality. Googling turned up hints that noapic would fix these problems since I've got a 32 bit CPU. It did, however, it broke my ability to get to the network. The onboard NIC (Realtek 8100C) is recognized, and the 8139too driver module is loaded, but pump fails with the useless error message, "Operation failed". I've googled and searched this forum, but I haven't been able to find a solution or workaround to my particular problem, hence this post. I have captured output from dmesg, lspci, lsmod, as well as /etc files modified during boot, both with and without the noapic option. In both cases, I booted to runlevel 2, and loaded the ehci-hcd module so I could take full advantage of my USB 2.0 drive to capture the data and present it here. Since the blurb for this forum specifically asks for the output from lspci -v, I am including the output (from lspci -vv) below, but I'd be happy to provide any other data of interest.

Many thanks in advance.

Output from "lspci -vv"

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5950 (rev 10)
Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5950
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap- 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort+ >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64

0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5a3f (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 99
Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=68
I/O behind bridge: 0000e000-0000efff
Memory behind bridge: fdd00000-fddfffff
Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000f8000000-00000000fbf00000
BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- NoISA- VGA+ MAbort- >Reset- FastB2B-
Capabilities: [44] #08 [a803]
Capabilities: [b0] #0d [0000]

0000:00:11.0 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 437a (prog-if 8f [Master SecP SecO PriP PriO])
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 1b34
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64, Cache Line Size: 0x08 (32 bytes)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: I/O ports at ff00 [size=8]
Region 1: I/O ports at fe00 [size=4]
Region 2: I/O ports at fd00 [size=8]
Region 3: I/O ports at fc00 [size=4]
Region 4: I/O ports at fb00 [size=16]
Region 5: Memory at fe02f000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=2 PME-
Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
Address: 00000000 Data: 0000

0000:00:12.0 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4379 (prog-if 8f [Master SecP SecO PriP PriO])
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 1b34
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64, Cache Line Size: 0x08 (32 bytes)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 10
Region 0: I/O ports at fa00 [size=8]
Region 1: I/O ports at f900 [size=4]
Region 2: I/O ports at f800 [size=8]
Region 3: I/O ports at f700 [size=4]
Region 4: I/O ports at f600 [size=16]
Region 5: Memory at fe02e000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=2 PME-
Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
Address: 00000000 Data: 0000

0000:00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4374 (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 1b34
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64, Cache Line Size: 0x10 (64 bytes)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: Memory at fe02d000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: [d0] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
Address: 00000000 Data: 0000

0000:00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4375 (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 1b34
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64, Cache Line Size: 0x10 (64 bytes)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: Memory at fe02c000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: [d0] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
Address: 00000000 Data: 0000

0000:00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4373 (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 1b34
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64, Cache Line Size: 0x10 (64 bytes)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: Memory at fe02b000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0+,D1+,D2+,D3hot+,D3cold-)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
Bridge: PM- B3+
Capabilities: [d0] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
Address: 00000000 Data: 0000

0000:00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4372 (rev 11)
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 1b34
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Region 0: I/O ports at 0400 [size=16]
Region 1: Memory at fe02a000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
Capabilities: [b0] #08 [a802]

0000:00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4376 (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 1b34
Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 3
Region 0: I/O ports at <unassigned>
Region 1: I/O ports at <unassigned>
Region 2: I/O ports at <unassigned>
Region 3: I/O ports at <unassigned>
Region 4: I/O ports at f400 [size=16]
Capabilities: [70] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
Address: 00000000 Data: 0000

0000:00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4377
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 1b34
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle+ MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap- 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 0

0000:00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4371 (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode])
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop+ ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap- 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64
Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=64
I/O behind bridge: 0000d000-0000dfff
Memory behind bridge: fde00000-fdefffff
Prefetchable memory behind bridge: fc000000-fcffffff
BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- NoISA- VGA- MAbort- >Reset- FastB2B-

0000:00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4370 (rev 02)
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 1b34
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=slow >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64 (500ns min), Cache Line Size: 0x08 (32 bytes)
Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 5
Region 0: Memory at fe029000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities: [40] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
Address: 00000000 Data: 0000

0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
Control: I/O- Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Capabilities: [80] #08 [2101]

0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
Control: I/O- Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-

0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
Control: I/O- Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-

0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
Control: I/O- Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-

0000:01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5954 (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 1b34
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64 (2000ns min), Cache Line Size: 0x08 (32 bytes)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 5
Region 0: Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
Region 1: I/O ports at ee00 [size=256]
Region 2: Memory at fddf0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

0000:02:02.0 Modem: Smart Link Ltd.: Unknown device 2800 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Generic])
Subsystem: Smart Link Ltd.: Unknown device 2800
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64 (3500ns min, 12500ns max), Cache Line Size: 0x08 (32 bytes)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 10
Region 0: Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=16M]
Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=100mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
Bridge: PM- B3+

0000:02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
Subsystem: Elitegroup Computer Systems: Unknown device 8139
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 64 (8000ns min, 16000ns max)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 5
Region 0: I/O ports at de00 [size=256]
Region 1: Memory at fdeff000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=375mA PME(D0-,D1+,D2+,D3hot+,D3cold+)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-