How to configure two NIC's in Debian 6.0.4 box?

[Miroslav Skoric <skoric@eunet.rs>]

I have a dual-boot Win$/Debian box having two cards, an older one 3Com 
(3C905TX in Win$, 3c59x in Deb) and a newer one TP Link (TF-3200 in 
Win$, sundance in Deb). Both cards are wired to the other two machines 
in the LAN, the older card links to an older box, the newer card links 
to a newer box.

The issue is that the 'central' box sees the old NIC as eth0 and the new 
NIC as eth1, though I would like it to be the opposite. Besides that, it 
seems that the cards get renamed during the system boot, as follows:

renamed network interface eth1 to eth1-eth0
renamed network interface eth0 to eth1
renamed network interface eth1-eth0 to eth0

The only stuff within /etc/network/interfaces is:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

and the working parameters for both cards are set by Network Manager 
Applet 0.8.1

I wonder what is the best way to reconfigure the NIC's so the old card 
(now eth0) boots as eth1, and the new card (now eth1) boots as eth0?