I'm blushing whilst I'm writing this cos I'm feeling more and more stupid as I go on. But I guess humiliation never hurt anyone. I didn't realise that the term natsemi referred to the driver.Without opening the computer up (and I daren't because I have already caused some sort of problem trying to partition it for a remaster) I am not sure but the system board user manual states that there is a built in ethernet LAN (10Base-TX/100Base-T Physical Layer,MII Interface to Ethernet Controller) and the USB 2.0 is a PCI multi function device consisting of 2 UHCI Host Controllers(for low speed signalling) and one EHCI Host Controller for full speed signalling.

Times moved on from the time a wrote the first part of the post. I tried "sudo modprobe via-rhine" but that failed. I tried looking in the help files but I couldn't find the commands to bring up this passage:

If you have a VIA "Rhine" based network card (Rhine-I (VT86C100A), Rhine-II (VT6102), or Rhine-III (VT6105)), say Y here. Rhine-type Ethernet functions can also be found integrated on South Bridges (e.g. VT8235). To compile this driver as a module, choose M here. The module will be called via-rhine.

So I went back into pppoe config and added any module that could be remotely linked to my computer (as you said via-rhine was already there). The computer started chugging when I added PCI drivers, but I'm not sure if that was the thing that did it, but when I went back to pppoe configuration and entered dhcp-yes, it recognized my
eth0 and eth1. Then when I did ifconfig it all came up and I was able to go back to networkcardconfiguration and Voila. Sorry I have typed this in in long form, but I am likely to forget what went on. I've posted it with my question as well.

PS would it be naughty to send you another post about my partitioning problem if I don't find an answer somewhere