Hi, Is your Gentoo using udev? I personally prefer and recommend Debian because it's a lot easier. If your Gentoo is very old, udev isn't the problem, but I would check that first. I posted very detailed instructions on how to solve the problem with udev. It's in the Speakup archives, but basically it likes moving the eth0 to eth1. You have to delete the rules that make it do that and you should be fine. Failing that, I would buy an Intel E1000 card. It's about $35 but gives very much better performance and is plug and play so it's easier to set up. I used the exact same 3Com card in a server for years and all my headaches went away with the Intel card. If you can confirm that udev is definitely not the problem, I don't know. You shouldn't need to recompile the kernel just to use a different driver though. I would definitely look at Debian or grml, especially since you should still have hardware speech.
