When laptop is docked, eth0 moves from pcmcia to docking station nic (both work wth same driver)

[Buddy Lumpkin]

Hello All,
 
I don't know exactly where to look to solve this problem, so im posting
here.
 
I have a laptop with a 3com PCMCIA NIC and a 3com NIC built into a
docking station. When I dock my laptop, eth0 becomes the docking station
NIC. I just want to know where to look to be able to control which
device becomes which device. Im used to Solaris where a path_to_inst
file correlates a device path to an instance number and device links are
made accordingly. Does Linux have a similar capability?
 
I wouldn't care so much about this, but vmware acts flaky if you have a
bridge on both eth0 and eth1 when eth1 disappears.
 
Thanks in advance,
 
--Buddy