dear group!
  excuse me if the following questions are too stupid to answere but the
shallow FAQs and Docs on netbsd.org certainly couldn't answere my
questions:
  i am trieng to set up an intranet with netbsd being the gateway (of
course ;) so first step is to install bsd on the machine, stick a network
card in, connect it to the cable modem and start. after setting the
rc.conf and hence the dhcp client, i'm online without any problems. the
troubles come with trieng to connect the second machine. i don't manage to
get more than /netbsd device timeout from the second network interface. if
i unplug the bsd machine from the cable modem and plug the same interface
with a twisted pair cable to the second machine and change the settings to
a fixed ip (192.168.1.2) instead of dchp the chatter away without any
troubles. i tried many different network cards. some on irq9 some on irq10
but it seems it only works with the one card (novel2000) that seems to be
bi-chipped because bsd displayes two different interfaces on two different
irqs. only irq5 seems to be working. is that a valid assumption or am i
totally off? maybe someone could tell me what is going on or point me to a
more detailed bsd networking FAQ somewhere on the net...

thanks for your patience,
  shadi