FC2: ACPI: Unable to locate RSDP

[david]

Folks

A few problems; I'm not sure they're independent.

During initial bootstrap, I see the messages

  ACPI: Unable to locate RSDP

and later

   abpart: Unsupported Intel chipset (device id 1237)

And the Ethernet controller doesn't work (with a message "check cable")

The machine in question is
  Dell Workstation 400 MT
  The Ethernet "lights" are showing on both ends of the connection.

When FC1 was installed, I had to turn kudzu off because it screwed up the 
ethernet controller (documented in the archives), so I tried that approach 
in FC2 as well, but it doesn't help.

It has Fedora core 2 loaded from CDROM -- no updates yet because the 
ethernet controller isn't responding.

Any clues?

David