FC5 on 1950: eth0 now dev1804289383?

[Darren]

Hello:

I've got a weird problem on some (but not all!) of the 1950s in our 
organization with Fedora Core 5.

On a base install, (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp or after updating to 
2.6.16-1.2133_FC5smp) eth0 appears to be on NIC 2 instead of NIC1.

On at least one of these hosts, upgrading to 2.6.20-1.2300.fc5smp fixes this. 
On others though, upgrading to anything of 2.6.19 or beyond results in eth0 
disappearing all together and dev1804289383 replacing it.  No matter which of 
the NIC ports on the back I plug into, ethtool reports no link on either eth1 
or dev1804289383.

Google searches suggest that dev1804289383 is actually a wireless device of 
some kind, but that doesn't make sense here.

Has anyone else seen this behavior?