The NIC was working for a time and then it stopped for no apparent reason. I'd not tinkered with it since it was working (if it ain't broke, don't fix it). Been having alot of Suse problems lately, not just this one. Got pissed enough to where I wiped it off one of my systems and replaced it with Slack 7.0. I no longer have NIC problems and am learning how to administer a bare system. :o) The reason I included the history is because I can't stand when a poster doesn't include enough information for people to help. I'm not one for trading 20 emails on one problem. Also, working with NICs is much more elaborate than anything else on a computer system, even in Windows. I felt the information I provided was pertinent to this situation.
I can understand your frustration, since I've been there myself. But I don't think it's quite fair to blame SuSE for a problem with a very particular configuration, particularly when you haven't been able to diagnose the problem yet. You seem already to have done some work with fault isolation, for instance by seeing what works in Windows as a way of ruling out hardware problems. What might be useful would be to find out if anyone else here has hardware similar to yours and if they've had the same problems. You're more likely to get a useful response if you put the question that way than if you post a long history (though sometimes the long history strikes a responsive chord somewhere).
Paul