I've never heard of that one, sounds strange.
If your second NIC worked before with LMCE, then why not use that as your internet connection, and give the installation a go? In any event, I would be tempted to just give it a go and see what happens.
Or get hold of a standalone copy of Kubuntu 8.10, see if that works (if it does, you could do an "internet install". Could it possibly be a problem with the installation disk? Are you using an an old DVD, or is the latest snapshot, or what?