Thanks for the reply, I've been all over the linux boards, helpful, but still no solution. I've ID'd my wireless chipsets as Prism 2.5 and tried to make drivers, make install etc., no go!!!! I'll keep trying and will also try the Suse version you mentioned.
Linux has come a long way and is close to breaking out mainstream. Knoppix 3.4 picked up all my hardware, minus the wireless usb adapters. If it did I'd be typing to you from a Linux box.
Mepis is supposed to have good wireless support. I haven't had any experience with it personally, but if you go to the forums, you can find a lot of info about what works and what doesn't(www.mepis.org, www.mepislovers.com) .
I'm using it on this laptop, which is around 5 years old. Mepis picked up everything when it booted up the first time, including the video, audio, touchpad, and Lucent Winmodem. I bought a cheapie USB network adapter to use at work and it configured it off the bat, too. The only thing I had to do to get it the way I wanted was to do some minor configuring on the interface...KDE can be quite cluttered in it's default configuration.
This thing was a dog with Windows 98. Now, it works great. No crashes and decent speed (it's only a 433 mHz with 196MB of RAM).
And the best part: no viruses, no update fees, and no Microsoft spying on me.
Sorry for sounding like an advertisement, but Mepis is good stuff.