[tulip] Strange issue upon boot up with tulip driver

[Chris Story]

Hello guys and girls,

I'm hoping someone can help me out here with an issue I'm having on a
machine running SuSE Linux 9.0 Pro that has a Linksys LNE100TX 2.0 card that
uses the tulip driver.  It's acting rather strange...

Here's the scenario:

Upon boot up of the machine once the sequence reaches "Loading Network
Interface" and eth0 is loaded the card ceases to function.  Meaning it
doesn't see the network and the network doesn't see it.  The light for the
port it's plugged into on the router flashes steady and solid, but very slow
so I know no data is being transmitted or received.  Can't ping, etc... 

Now once I go into Yast2 like I'm going to make changes to the NIC and it
reloads all is fine. I really need to get this to load properly on boot
up...

So far I've tried:

Changing ports on the router
Changing cables
Changing PCI slots for the card
Changing the card for another just like it that is known to work
Removing and reloading the driver

Any other help will be greatly appreciated!

Chris