[CLUE-Tech] Install redhat 7.3 woes

[John and lynne]

I have an old k-5 233 box with a no-name ne2000 isa card that has
happily been working with Redhad 6.0, but I decided to update to Redhat
7.3, and play around with a more modern Gnome and KDE release.  I have
tried doing a "from scratch install and I cannot get the NIC card to be
recognized, although it works fine under RH 6.0.  I can't just install
7.3 on top of 6.0 because that seems to corrupt the updated XWindows
with old parameters configuration files from the prior release.  It
seemed simpler to go with a clean slate as there is no data to preserve
on this box.

I have downloaded the RPM for redhat-config-network update, which
according to redhat's bug registry is supposed to solve the problem of
being able to update parameters for cards that don't auto probe.  I have
checked /etc/modules.config for an entry for eth0 using the same IRQ and
memory address that worked with RH 6.0.  Still neither the NEAT program
nor ifup eth0 will bring up the interface.  Error message is to the
effect of "eth0 cannot be located/recognized."
There was some additional discussion of this on google which went so far
as suggesting that kernel 2.4 should be recompiled to accept these older
cards, but it was inconclusive, at least for my level of understanding.  

I thought to try installing NT 4.0 to see if it could give me a better
read on the irq and memory parameters of the card, but when I do that,
the NT install doesn't overwrite the lilo boot loader completely (my
interpretation anyway) and the machine boots up, goes through the normal
self test noise and then prints out li and freezes.   I tried
reinstalling 7.3 back, which was ok, then deleting lilo by "/sbin/lilo
-u ",while in redhat 7.3, and when I reboot the machine the same partial
boot and hang occurs, so the same residual remains   

Two questions, 
Is there a way to get 7.3 to accept this card--something else I can
manually tweek?  This is my first choice.

Is there a way to fully purge the hard drive of all remnantsmnants of
various installs and start with a clean slate, so I can see if I can set
this up to dual boot with NT 4.0?
    
Any suggestions would be appreciated, but this is my first time so be
gentile.

J.W.Likes