Knoppix 5.x is failing to set up the network connection on one of my machines here.
Networking works with 3.3, 3.7, 3.9 and 4.0 (LinuxTAG DVD).

Machine is BX based motherboard (ATC-6220), PII/400, 256Mb. NIC is 3com 3c900B.
DHCP served by firewall (Smoothwall 2.0) connected to DLink 604T. Various other
machines on network running Debian. They can ping each other and use the Internet
and everything, so it's not that before you ask.

With netcardconfig I can configure an IP address for eth0 but it the card is non reponsive
(cannot ping other machines and they cannot ping it). It shows up in ifconfig though.

vortex_diag (from Donald Becker's site) shows the card is using the correct ethernet
port (it's a combo card).

Running "ispci -v" shows knoppix has detected network card. It looks normal.
Base address=0x6800 which it has always been in w9x and previous knoppixs (knoppixen?).

Running "ifconfig -a" shows eth0 as a detected interface but base address is something
else. In fact it shows a different address everytime it boots. So far I've had 0x2000,
0x6000, 0x8000, 0xc000, 0xe000 from both 5.0 DVD and 5.0.1 CD.

I believe this is why it's not working? It's something new in 5.0 as 3.x and 4.0 worked.

On another note, the soundcard is fanally working! It never work pre-5.0. The card is
Soundmonster II (AU8830). It's always been detected on the boot screen, just never
worked from KDE. Might this even be related to the network card problem?
(Now I think about it I should go back and check its base address?)

I'm still learning about device configuration stuff so this is about as far as I can go.
Is this a bug in 5.0?
Is there a way to set the base address manually or otherwise get it working?

Oh, I have another similar machine, also BX base (AX6B+) PIII/800. Also 3c900B NIC
but Radeon QD and SBLive (vs Elsa Erazor III and SM2). The on-board SCSI confounds
SuSE Live DVDs and various disk utils, but the 5.0 DVD and 5.0.1 CD work flawlessly on it.
The mystery deepens. Any ideas?

Thanks.