[Soekris] RESOLVED net4501, Slackware 12, ethernet devices being shuffled

[T. Marvin]

Thank you to both Chris and Justin... it was indeed udev that caught me 
off guard here.

For the record, and for the list archive so that anyone in the future 
can quickly resolve such quickly:

Slackware 12 uses udev which stores the MAC addresses in:
/etc/udev/rules.d/75-network-devices.rules

Once a card has been seen, the MAC address is stored there and it will 
not assign the eth# identifier to any other card.  New cards introduced 
to a system will be assigned subsequent numbers that have not yet been used.

Key words for searching:
Slackware 12, ethernet, numbering, higher number, different number, eth 
device, no eth0