I posted this thread over at http://www.tek-tips.com in this forum:
http://www.tek-tips.com/gthreadminde...ev3/70/pid/619
(can't link straight to the post I guess). The poster came back with this a bit ago:

Redhat 9 not recognizing network card

Ok a little update so you guys can help the next person that has this problem. Hewlett Packard put its name on my NIC so i thought it was a HP NIC, but i inspected the tons of number physically on the card and got the part number and found out it was made by Accton, which must have been bought out by SMC, so i used the RealTek 8139 driver.... I was beginning to think i was going ot have to get a new NIC. Thanks for you time looking though.
Don't know if it's of any help to anyone, but what the heck?