Beginners's Beowulf question

[ferraron@kenyon.edu]

I are working on a 16 node Beowulf system running RH 5.2 on Compaq Deskpro XL
machines that were "retired" from one of the computer labs on campus.  I am
having what is most likely a very elementary problem for most of you, but a 
difficult one for someone like me (just getting my feet wet in the Linux 
ocean).  
	The problem is this: I cannot get Linux to recognize and initialize the
onboard ethernet card.  I know (from a very useful HOWTO) that the first
problem is that I must move the PCI directory from the higher memory blocks
(out of the kernel's reach) to a lower more managable area.  Using the Compaq
MOVEPCI.SYS file, I was able to accomplish this, but that has not solved the
problem.  
	Once again I turned to the HOWTO pages and they suggested that I make
sure that the PCNET32 module was included in the conf.modules file.  This was
the case, so I checked the boot messages from the kernel to see if eth0 had
been initialized.  I noticed, upon booting the system, that there was a message
late in the boot process saying, "delaying eth0 initialization".  There were no
further messages concerning ethernet support at all.  The cards are active,
as indicated by the activity lights on my 3Com 3300 switch, and that pinging
127.0.0.1 has returned every packet.  They just are not being recognized by
Linux.  Has anyone seen this before, and if so what did you do to resolve it.  
The HOWTO pages are not very much help with this specific problem.  
Thank you very much for your help.  
	I hope to get this system up and running soon!  

Nicholas Ferraro
Lab Curator 
Kenyon College
Gambier, OH 43022
ferraron@kenyon.edu 
(740)427-5364