I had to uninstall Mandrake 9.0 because my modem happens to be the only one listed as being incompatible on the Mandrake site. (5634BTS a jumperable hardware modem - go figure). Anyway, I decided to load it onto another machine which has another Archtek, a 5634PCV which comes with linux drivers. It's not on the Mandrake 9.0 best loved list either but it seems to be, generally speaking, linux friendly.
You can probably expect to see me back looking for modem installation help but my main problem now is uninstalling Mandrake from the first machine. I put the CD back in and managed to delete that partition and restore the DOS partition from a restoration disk created during the install.
I have re-formatted the partition and am able to boot back into 98SE but I still have to go through Mandrake's bootloader.
How can I lose this bootloader?

boot to dos, run "fdisk /MBR"

if you are going to install xp/2000/nt it will automaticly earase it

I'm sure either solution would have worked but fdisk /MBR did it for me, thanks to both of you.

thanks for this, I used the search to find a way to remove the Lindows loader, and found this, thereby saving myslef a lot of time posting and waiting.

Nick