I want to start by saying I am a NB but very dedicated. I am trying to setup a dhcp , firewall, gateway server. I have installed installed 2 nic in the setup, one being a 3com (3c59x) and a linksys lne100 tx (tulip). When i plug BOTH cards in the hwaddr for eth0 (linksys) is detected as FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF the 3com hwaddr is detected fine . However when I only leave one of the cards in that cards address is detected correctly.

Should i ignore this will this affect anything or is this normal?

I've looked up for help but i don't seem to get very far. I try to configure the cards manually just in case if the problem was caused by the pnp. The problem i ran into is that how do I know the base location of a particular NIC? can I just enter any number?

second what command can i use to detect to see what device uses what irq?

any help is appreciated

This will list your IRQs...

Sounds like a bad card. I had a 3c9XX with the same prob. And it was a bad card.

I am not totally sure why it is displaying that HW addy, however, that address that you have listed there is the broadcast for layer-2. When you start the computer up, does dmesg display any error messages? anything in /var/log/messages that look suspicious?

aye thats a bcast addy