Check for pci irq conflicts.

Additionally, try the nic in another slot.

Rationale / trivia:

PCI bus does IRQ assignments in a different way from oldschool ISA or VLB buses.

Instead of directly asserting a cpu IRQ, each pci device has a 'bus' IRQ: Either "A","B", "C", or "D". The PCI bridge chipset then handles assignment/mapping of a real CPU IRQ number with the PCI Slot IRQ letter. This is what 'PCI IRQ steering" is.

For motherboards with integrated devices (USB controller, IDE controller, Sound chip, etc), all these devices are usually treated like a combo-card, living on one of the exposed slots, and are all using the same slot PCI IRQ. This is why 'no matter what you do', they will "always use the same IRQ number".

Some PCI devices do not play well with sharing their IRQ with other devices, and will cause no end of trouble if they are installed into the 'shared slot' with the onboard devices. NICs are a common offender.

Since it's refusing to turn on the card, and you are getting the dreaded yellow exclamation point, check for IRQ conflicts, where it looks like the card is on the same IRQ as a bunch of other stuff. (USB, PS/2 keyboard/mouse, etc). If you see that this is the case, move the NIC to another slot.

And... check in your BIOS - many BIOS have PCI setup screens where you can configure the IRQs assigned to the various devices.

Also, since it's Win95, you could boot to MSDOS and run my PCINIC utility (available in PKTDRV archive in my downloads) which will give you information about PCI NICs in your system, including assigned address. irq etc.

Looks like I got it working, I didn't bother checking the "Other devices" section there, after installing drivers correctly it shows up just fine. Appreciate the ideas though, thanks!