Yes, Redhat is very automated when it comes to detecting hardware and loading it up. This process also added about 10 seconds to the startup time for me. It's good and bad. Going from Redhat to Slackware is a great way to discover how vastly different two Linux distributions can be. Slackware is very much a distribution for somebody who wants to learn how to set up things manually and how things actually work. I've found that most Slackware users detest Redhat and vise versa. They are, IMHO, really designed for different types of people. I am the type who likes to tinker, so Slackware appeals to me. What sort of modem do you have? Is it PCI or ISA? If it's ISA, you may need to run a Plug 'N Play utility to get it working. You may also need setserial to configure it. You can edit /etc/serial.conf to give the right parameters to set serial, and then remove the "#" in front of the line in /etc/rc.d/rc.S to call on the rc.serial script. It is disabled by default because I guess it can hang the computer if it tries to configure a nonexistent port. The scripts in the /etc/rc.d directory are good to look at because they explain fairly well what they are doing. /etc/rc.d/rc.local is a good place for customized stuff like setting up Speakup the way you like it. For ISA Plug 'n Play, there is a kernel module called isa-pnp. Try running "modprobe isa-pnp" by hand and type dmesg and read the last few lines to see if it found and configured anything. If it did, add a "/sbin/modprobe isa-pnp" to the bottom of /etc/rc.d/rc.modules. For the network, run netconfig. It lets you choose either DHCP or static IP.
