SOLVED!!!!! thanks CMB!!!
(have 4 nics total on board, all intel i354- and I kept 1 for esxi mgt functions.) (VMX3 works too- I also manually matched physical MACs w. NICs in PF vm options- I don't know if that works better… or what) (the 100 speed is just my old switch- I wasn't sure if the new switch was bad or not.) (will put my other VMs on the LAN vswitch2)
Enclosed are a couple pics (stock, wrong, and working)- so if others have this issue.... they can see how to fix.





