> > 
> > Could someone running one of these 3COM cards tell me what the
> > trick is?
> 
> Replace it with a real card..  :-)
> 

Actually, my experience with 3COM and SMC has been the opposite of yours.

I finally figured this problem out today...

It seems that even if I give the PCI bios config a list of Interupts
that it can use, none of the unused ones are available for anthing
else.

Problem solved. It works fine.