Sdalek,

Are you saying the if you boot with the nodhcp option from the knoppix livecd, your net connection works? If you can confirm this, this can easily be fixed in your hd install by changing one of your config scripts in /etc/pcmcia.
Open /etc/pcmcia/network.opts in any text editor and change the line:
DHCP="y"
to
DHCP="n"
Modify /etc/network/interfaces to something like this:
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# This entry denotes the loopback (127.0.0.1) interface.
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
mapping hotplug
script grep
map eth0

# This entry was created during the Debian installation
# (network, broadcast and gateway are optional)
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.x.xxx
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.x.0
broadcast 192.168.x.255
gateway 192.168.x.yyy
Replace the "x" and "y" with your correct numbers before saving.
Reboot and let me know if that does it for you.

HTH,

Durand