Anyway, Thomas Eberhardt noted that the following patch seems
  necessary with PCnet-32 chips.  Perhaps it will work for you.  It
  seems to me that the latter bit contradicts the documented behavior of
  the LANCE, but I don't have PCnet-32 docs to verify that that it's
  documented the same way.

I haven't run up the full distrib yet, so all I'm saying is a current SUP
kernel is able to ifconfig and ping correctly, but if thats sufficient
confidence check then you've fixed it. MANY MANY THANKS!!!!!
  
  It's also possible that your board isn't expecting to use DMA to
  normal memory.  Does it appear to have any RAM onboard?

Uh.. yes I think so. the config util for DOS permits enabling burst-mode
on the VL-bus, is this remotely relevant? (I didn't, and its not enabled
by default)

-George