After installing Mandrake 9.2 and puzzling over why I only have KDE on there and was never given a chance to select other packages from the 2-CD set, upon further looking I see that CD2 contains a file called "cdromchange.img" -- my system never asked for the second CD and so it appears all I have installed is KDE.

I want the other apps now so what do I do???? I can see all the files in there, through Konqueror, but I don't know how to install them.

Do I have to do it from the Konsole? Do I go to failsafe mode?

I desperately need to get my network card set up and since that didn't work during install (it's a "NE2000 compatible" but neither of the similar looking drivers worked. neither did anything else). So I need to have the Mandrake control center or something on there to allow me to set it up.

Any ideas???

Check /sbin/lsmod for a module called ne2k-pci. If it didn't load try
modproble ne2k-pci

What other apps are you wanting to install? You can install other apps by using MDk control center RPM manager.