OK I'm on a 400SP gateway laptop and the wireless pcmcia card is an Orinoco 802.11b Gold card and is in slot1. It says the card is unsupported evenm though it's said that the 2.4 kernel supports this card. Also I need to know how to patch the drivers once I get them working. I'm also not sure of the best place to get the patch.

Conclusion:
1: How do I get my wireless card working?
2: If I need to patch the driver how do I do so?

Major thanks to anyone who helps. Please help!

no idea really.. but some advice, you might want to check your kernel, and whether the support pcmcia networking is compiled/ modulised. If you haven't got the kernel source installed (this doesn't come with slack by standard) um... google for what kernel module you need for this card, and see if you have it with a modinfo [name of module] as root. Sorry, google's timing out for me right now, so i can't check myself.
Who says its unsupported, and who says it's supported in 2.4? It's possible that it's 2.4.22 you need, in which case you'll need to install the source from kernel.org and compile it. (see sig )
Still, if it's said it's possible, it probably is.