re: 8139 and interface errors

I'll update my original post as we have discovered the cause of the
large amount of errors.
The rtl8139 cards being used were traced back to being Allied Telesyn
cards.  When using
the DOS based configuration utility, the default setting for connection
is "auto".  Other options
are 10Mb half, 10Mb full, 100Mb half, and 100Mb full.   For whatever
reason the default 'auto'
setting works fine on the Debian 2.2 machines.  On the upgraded 3.0
machines, the setting
must be set to any of the other settings.  We tried all 4 settings, and
in all cases the eth0
interface runs compeletly error free.   On the older boxes, it doesn't
seem to matter that setting
is used, they continue to run error free.  But for whatever reason, the
upgraded systems will
not play nice if the setting is left at auto.   I'm sure we'll all sleep
better tonight.   :)