Recap:

the boot image for the i386 port of 1.3_ALPHA seems to have 
difficulty with SMC Ultra Elite16 cards.

Solution:

Be sure to ifconfig lo0 (the lookback device).  /etc/netstart warns
of this, but the README file on ftp.netbsd.org does not.  Further
it would seem there is some kind of conflict between the probing
of other other devices.  This conflict requires rerunning of the SMC
configuration utility before the card is usable again :-(  By building
a boot image that only contains the card you plan to use, the problem
does not occur.

Thanks to Bill, Havard and all that offered input!

I will try to determine with devices are colliding this evening now
that I understand what the issues are...