Been reading a lot but can't find one like this...

I can set up my Orinoco Gold Card (found on eth0) with netcardconfig using a static IP and it works great. Wavelan card config does not work unless I enter it via netcardconfig first but in the end, all is good so I save my configuration to my USB thumb drive on /mnt/sda1. I have verified that the file is on the drive, too.

Here's the problem:

When I boot using knoppix myconfig=/mnt/sda1 I run into a problem. Not only does my card not work, but also eth0 is gone. (Same if I use knoppix myconfig=scan) ifconfig only shows eth1 (the built-in net card - not wireless) and of course, lo. iwconfig doesn't show it either. However, cardctl ident shows it and cardctl status says it is ready.

I noticed some troubling lines after the boot finds my configuration but am nOOb enough to still be confused as to why it is happening. It appears that the boot process eliminates my eth0. Here are the lines:

cardmgr[97] ./network stop eth0
cardmgr[97] /sbin/pump -r -i eth0
cardmgr[97] Operation failed.
cardmgr[97] /sbin/ifconfig eth0 down
ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device.
Failed to bring up eth0.

Here's what I have tried and hasn't worked:

ifconfig eth0 up
pump -i eth0
(Didn't work)

Tried this cheat code, too:
knoppix pci=biosirq
(Didn't work but I read something about IRQ being assigned incorrectly in a post)

Also confusing is the fact that I cannot get DHCP to work with this card but I can get the static configuration to work just fine - I'd just like to boot with it from my USB drive instead of entering it every time. I can get DHCP to work on my desktop that is connected via a regular net card and through a wireless bridge. DHCP is set up correctly on the network.

Any help is greatly appreciated and thanks for reading this long post.