I think i've stuffed the irq/drq/iomem/base, but assuming I haven't
     how 'compliant' are these kinds of thing? Its citing an AMD chipset
     for the ethernet driver, I didn't see any code that directly referenced
     that in the probe options for the if_*.c sources.
  
  It's probably one of the LANCE or PCnet series.  Try the `le' driver.

Many thanks for guidance, I've progressed on a bit with this advice.
In particular, using the le driver it detects and asserts a reasonable
config at boot time for NE2100/AM7990 card/chipset.

However breaking into single-user state on the boot floppy I then ifconfig
the device live and then get flooded with le: RBUFF messages as a constant
stream. I've tried re-compiling the kernel with LEDEBUG and enabled 
ifconfig debug, the trace info isn't very meaningful to a klutz like me.

I think I'll pull this card out and stick to an older ISA bus ethernet
for now, but if anyone else has been playing with NE2100/Am7990 cards
on VLB I'd love to know. 

The docs say its an:

	COMPEX ENET-32VL AM70C965 PCnet-32 single-chip ethernet controller

so I'd have expected the chipset detector in if_le.c to go with the
chip_type[...] of "Am79960 PCnet-ISA" instead. Maybe the probe routines
are confused on this rev of card?

-George