dell dimension 2400- 2.6gig celeron,512mg pc2700 ddr, 160gig WD hard
drive.dvd drive,dvd burner/cd burner combo drive.
dual boot winxp home sp2 & suse 9.1 personal. install went fine, dual boot
thing works great BUT can not connect to internet from linux.
have cable modem connected thru usb so i can use nic to network to
another computer.

If I remember correctly, open up Yast and go to 'Network Devices'. Choose a new connection and all you should have to do is select device type as ethernet and then tick the 'USB' box about half way down the page. No need to touch any other settings and the default dhcp should work just fine.
One thing I had to do in a console was to 'ifdown eth1' and then 'ifup eth1' to initiate the connection and then it worked ok. It will designate eth1 to the cable modem if you already have your NIC detected btw. I had many similar probs with my usb modem so hope this works.