I want to thank all of you very much for helping me to resolve
my ping problem. All your comments, suggestions and ideas were
much appreciated!
Here was the solution:
You have to disable the IDE interfaces on the Intel Zappa
motherboard by hit the F1 key during power up and go into
menu setup screen. After you disabled the PCI IDE interfaces
and reboot your bsdi box, your ping will work fine. What you
have done is to allow your 3c509B card to use IRQ 15 (the default).
Thanks....lin