weird network problem with slackware

hi everyone...i recently installed slackware, and at first had
problems configuring a second network card since slackware only
detects the first card.

basically i posted a message in the slackware newsgroup and they told
me what files i needed to configure, and i then reinstalled redhat 9
and wrote down all the info i could find about what redhat detected my
network card as.

And it worked, i was using slackware as a router, without any problem.

but every time i reboot the slackware server, my internal network
doesn't come up.

i thought at first, maybe the box itself was dead, but its not. The
external network works because i can connect to the server from work.

i tried to type arp and it will only shows my external ip's gateway.
nothing else. I can ping my internal interface (192.168.1.1) but i
can't ping my internal machine (192.168.1.2)

when i do arp again, it shows the 192.168.1.2 address but it does not
show the mac address it says (incomplete)


and it gets stranger....if i boot up and log on locally and do the
exact same steps as i did above, then it works. but my server does
not have a monitor, and its alot of trouble for me to carry a monitor
to it everytime i need to reboot.


is there anything i can do? any possible thing that is causing it?

also. my /var/log/messages looks normal..no errors or anything