can´t ether-wake a sarge machine

["Bruno Buys" <bruno.grupos@gmail.com>]

I can´t wake up my sarge desktop by doing
ether-wake 00:11:22:33:44:55 
from my coyote gateway. The very same command (with the correspoding mac address, of course) is able to wake up my girlfriend sarge desktop.
The only thing that comes to my mind is the eth card. Mine uses a via-velocity module, while hers is a 8139too (rtl8139c pci). But I´m not sure and I have no idea how to work around this.
any help?
thanks!