Anyone want an easy n00b question to answer? Here's one:
I used a PC card modem with Mandrake 9.2 but I don't remember how. Using RH Fed Core 1 and now Man10, when I go to Connect to the Internet (in gnome) there is NO option to choose for PCMCIA. Only Serial Modem, ISDN, Cable and Wireless. (This is a laptop without a serial port, also has a Winmodem.)
There is no config problems, no driver problems (Yenta), nothing is wrong except I can't find how to select pc modem. It's not mentioned in my Mandrake Manual (it's got more pages on how to point-and-click than on how to do stuff that's new to Linux newbies).
How do I tell it to use the card?
I am willing to do this without the GUI if necessary. I'm tired of having to use Windoze at work to get online to research Linux!!
--gaviidae

gaviidae; use this for guidance http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX
scroll to section relating to u r device,s and expand for detail info.

Good news and bad news. The howto under modems had serial, cable wireless etc. It was all about issues with it not working... I have looked at various howto linux pages for many questions... usually it's hit and miss finding what I need.
Good news for anyone else who RTFM and couldn't figure out what to do: I kept shutting down my machine hitting esc for verbose mode because that's how I knew it saw the PCcard. Finally I caught it saying that the cardmngr was dealing with ttyS0. That was the answer I was looking for!
I went into KPPP and under device selector could change the port it was looking for. (ttys0)
I wish this had been in TFMandrake Manual, which only says "select serial modem for dial-up."
I need to thank Habib for telling me to look at what the machine was shutting down.
(gaviidae does a newbie dance-- I'm back online!!)

gaviidae; great and good job! that would not have been possible with W
unless their support interdicted ha. no crash just like timex keeps on ticking.!!!!!

Yeah while I'm still a little PO'd at Mandrake (see, I paid $40 for 9.2 because I thought I would get, you know, a manual?) but unlike M$ if you can't find anything in the weenie manual and get lost in the company website, you can still go to an army of ubergeeks in linuxland and find some answers independent of the company.
Next task will be learning to type "ubergeeks" with the umlaut I lost when I ditched the windoze
gaviidae