First off, welcome to daemonforums.org...
Second, Google is certainly a trusted source when it comes to Linux. The man pages on Linux tend to leave a lot to be desired...not so with OpenBSD (most BSD projects, for that matter, have superior man pages than Linux). You can "man -k <some_topic>" to get a list of man pages that discuss whatever topic you're looking for. That should be your first stop before consulting Google =)
As for the second NIC, is it actually being recognized? You mention a single line from dmesg, but since you already have a NIC in the machine, is there a second dmesg line that matches the SMC 1244TX? If not (or it says "not configured" after it), your card doesn't have a driver and won't work until a driver is written for it. If it *IS* being recognized, what does ifconfig have pertaining to that card?
And you're correct, hostname.* files are only used if the hardware is actually there.
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Linux/Network-Security Engineer by Profession. OpenBSD user by choice.
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