Hello. I'm a "relative newbie" (tried it on some desktops in the past) to Linux and have been trying to install Mandrake 9.2 on my Toshiba Satellite 2100CDS notebook PC. During the install process (I've been through it a few times now), the system locks up anytime it tries to do anything with the PCMCIA ports. I've been reading other people's posts on here and other Linux forum sites which talk about disabling the PCMCIA during install (forget how exactly to do this at the moment), but if I disable the port, then how do I actually *use/enable* the PCMCIA ports when I finally get Linux installed and running? I'll be using a Netgear MA401 PCMCIA Wireless Ethernet card to connect to my network and the internet.
Can anyone list the steps I need to do the above so that ideally I'll be able to turn on the laptop, it boot into Linux with no hangups, and the PCMCIA and MA401 card work properly? Thanks in advance for your help!!!

If any cards are in the PCMCIA slots, take them out and try to install. You can recompile kernels afterwards and see what's going down. If your problem still exists with PCMCIA even though there are no cards in the slots, depending on the distro (you didn't tell us which one) there might be a way around so that you can get to install.

Bear in mind, some cards are simply not going to work, either due to not being supported under Linux or because your laptop wont support them (I don't know how old your Toshiba is). I have an Ibm thinkpad 760El and it is _ages_ old (Pentium 1 at 90Mhz) and the first PCMCIA card I bought wouldn't run because some bridge thingie wasn't supported on my laptop...(I don't remember the exact reason but I remember even emailing the maintainer of the pcmcia code and he told me that the card will never work with that particular laptop).

G.