funny, but that was among the first things I tried before posting. I did look the board over as well.
Sorry, just a thought as this was the cause of the problems I had. Have you tried locking the port at half-duplex?

Why does the unit default to 169.254.x.x with no cable? (well the wpnq does anyway, but its the same as when it gets no assignment on eth)
I beleive this is the default IP if it can't find the DHCP server.