In great tradition of not trying enough before posting, I found that for some unkown reason, the e1000 module wasn't being automatically loaded. After manually modprobing it the network cards are detected just fine. This is the first time I have had to manually load NIC kernel modules in Knoppix.

I have just booted Knoppix 4.0.2 CD on a PowerEdge 2850 and it is unable to detect the network card.
Since the machine is not at this location and I am performing all of this through Dells RAC (remote admin console or some such thing) I don't have any copy-pastes of output, but I took a screenshot of lspci (I didn't have the heart to retype it).
screenshot

That shows both the network card error as well as the lspci output. That seems like a common NIC so I am not sure if I am overlooking something. Also my forum searches haven't turned up any similar problems so perhaps I am doing something wrong.

Once I get the card up I can ssh into the machine and take care of the rest.

Thanks in advance for any and all help,

riogeedee