I'm helping a friend install Knoppix on his machine, and we are currently stumped by the following:

He's got two PnP cards (and SB compatible sound card, and a SMC NE2000 compatible ethernet card). His system uses a PS/2 style mouse.

On CD boot, or on boot from the hard drive, the PS/2 mouse is unusable, because one of the PnP cards is always configured to IRQ 12 (whichever one loads second). However, if we boot from the HD with "ne" removed from /etc/modules, and then manually "modprobe ne" after the boot is done, the ethernet card nicely configures up on IRQ9, and all three devices (net, sound, mouse) work together.

We're trying to figure out how the correct selection can be made a boot time. We've done some experimenting with isapnp.conf, but it seems like its being ignored on boot. (or we are doing something wrong).

One other piece of info, in case it matters. We've not been able to get dual boot with Windows working off the mbr, so he's currently using a boot floppy to start Linux off the HD.

Any suggestions for what the correct way to solve this problem might be?