Duel Ethernet card problems?

[Doug Bronson]

Hi group.
After coming to the conclusion that IPChains was not going to do what I
wanted it to do, I decided to not only upgrade to RH 8 (using IPtables)
but to build a new machine.

All was going well with the build and OS installation until I shut the
machine down. Upon boot up only one network card worked (both are the
same make and model). After some playing around with "netconfig" I got
the other one working but when I tried to ping the other network (using
the other card) it had quit working.

After about 6 hours of messing with it, I gave up and did a full
reinstall of the OS.
Once again, all was fine until the first reboot. Then back to the old
problem.

I can always get one or the other working. But not both at the same
time.

Here is what I have done:
Swapped cards in the pci slots. 
Used different pci slots.
Tried three different cards, one being the onboard device.
Changed the IRQ's. Both in the bios and os.
Loaded on an old Caldera Open Linux os. Both cards worked normally. But
no IPtables.

What gives?

Any ideals?

One last question, where the hell is the host name stored?
There is no /etc/hostname or /etc/HOSTNAME file on the system.

Thanks
Doug