Internet Connectivity

[suckbite]

Hi,

I've been trying to get a Linux machine to connect to the internet now for a couple months, reading 
FAQ's and man pages trying to find the commands to get things to work the way I need it to.  
I've not had much luck, partially because a lot of the FAQ's are over my head.  I'm using @Home for 
my ISP, and running a Linux Mandrake 7.2 machine.  I was having some troubles getting my 
3Com card to be recognized by my cable modem and dug out an old SMC card I had tucked away in a 
closet somewhere and that seems to at least be recognized by the modem.  I'm not sure 
what my problem is, I assume I need a hostname to get DHCP to do it's thing, but I don't know what 
the hostname would be.  Then again I may be off the mark altogether. 
I'm sorry for such a limited amount of information, any help in laymans terms would be greatly 
appreciated.

Chris