phew! The lack of connectivity through the ethernet wired link was caused by my failure to find all 3 bits of the bios to set up. I had spotted the option for power saving of the network hardware and the option for enabling the hard wired LAN but I had missed the option to turn on the LAN boot rom.
Just need to sort out the driver for the MA311 wireless card and then cart all the stuff back to my play room.
Rans6...