Netgear evidently refuses to admit that there is a problem and will not release new drivers (they still have drivers from 2001 on their website.)
National Semiconductor, however, has updated drivers available which fix the problem.
You can get them here: National DP83815 Drivers
My computer some times still seems to seize up a bit, especially when there's a lot of network traffic, but at least it doesn't crash any more.
This page (C) 2003-2004 by Edwin Olson, eolson@mit.edu. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to link to this page, but do not copy it or its figures.