i dont know anything about the nics, but i do know that when i tried
to netboot my qube from one of the machines @ work that are multihomed
and therefore have 2 nics, it didnt like it, so i took the SMC nic out
and it worked fine with the single dLink something or other

did you disable the built in ethernet card while you were trying the
other cards?

i tried looking for a list of compatible nics, but "a compatible
network card" is all i got for ya

good luck, let us know if this helped


justin