Thanks for the reply.
I did get it working with the nvidia driver
i was trying to get the 3com port to work unsuccessfully
then once i did get it working i went and upgraded the kernel ;(
that was a mistake
after upgrading, the system no longer recognized eth0
so i restarted again
I am sure there is a better way to do this, but as I am new to Linux it is helping me learn.
Anyway....
Thanks for the help