Thanks for the info, I finally got it all working by following another thread about setting the eth0 and eth1 the correct way round. What was happing was that every time I rebooted, I would have to swap to the other network port??? Weird hey? It was like the reboot was a switch to swap them over!? Anyway its going alright now, I had assummed that the onboard nic would be eth0, and the pcie one would be eth1. That turned out to be the wrong assumption, but at least I know now. The other good news is that now the orbiter loads up without any messages about some devices not finished loading...blah, blah. Also I got the mythtv button to appear under "Advanced - Computing" which has never happened before. (Read another thread about that too) I now have sound, video, and network connection, there's no stopping me now!! I'm about to try playing a dvd so watch this space for more frustration. lol.
Thanks for all the help.
Matt.