> This answer is a guess, so someone jump in here to correct if I'm wrong.

Well, I'm jumping in, though there's not much I can correct, AFAICT :-)

> I would think that if you can actually ifconfig the interface then the kernel
> is programming the card with the proper IP address. However, that only means
					  ^^ ^^^^^^^
You mean MAC address, right?  You can give it whatever IP address you
want, but universally unique MAC address should be assigned to your
Ethernet card when your vendor shipped it.

> that _part_ of the kernel support for that card is working. Just because 
> the kernel can tell the card what it's IP address is does NOT mean that
> the kernel can send and receive packets from the card properly. Based on

Yeah, getting MAC address right doesn't mean getting everything right.
I know it because I tried to get my Kinetics EtherPort SE/30 to work
with NetBSD/mac68k, but so far I only got MAC address right.  The
project is pending right now (sorry >DaynaPort owners).

ken