OpenBSD Questions, Request for pointers, and guidance in self help

[Shane A Broomhall]

Hi All,

I am having a play with OpenBSD, It is something that the people at work want 
for me to be able to use and be comfortable with.  I have put it on a Toshiba 
3110 CT Portege laptop. Nice little machine. 

I have managed to for the first time, with a hint from a freind at work 
managed to manually configure my laptop to use X and it runs a very small 
window manager, I think it is FWM.  I have some instructions to allow for it 
to start using KDE so when I go back to work I will try those, and that will 
also be a learning experience.  I am finding it rewarding to go through and 
manually do things, well using the tools provided, instead of using a wizard 
or allowing setup to do it for me.  In that vein I am asking for some help.

I have been switching from SUSE to Redhat to Windows for about the last 12 
months or so, but I have finally got work to allow for me to have my 
operating system of choice on my laptop so I am using SUSE and Vmware for any 
windows apps I need to use.

I want to be able to have this OpenBSD laptop use

1. A modem, I have an external one.  I am hoping that someone can point me 
towards a location where I can find some instructions on how to configure a 
modem manually, setup a mount point and use the system to dial into an ISP.

2. I am hoping to be able to use the PCMCIA card that is included with the 
laptop.

3.  I am hoping to be able to setup the laptop with OpenBSD to be able to use 
my home, & hopefuly in the future network printers at work.

4. I am hoping to be able to understand the different partioning scheme.

I would classify myself as a  keen home user, with no high level of 
expertise, but I see this as being a good learning curve.  I am hoping to use 
this project to increase my general Linux/Unix knowledge and skills.

I am also hoping for some hints on which search engines to use, for Linux, 
BSD and Unix.  How to efficently use them so I dont have to post the same 
question to a list as someone else has.

And lastly but not least, without getting into some religious crusade, if I 
can find like on the list some information about FreeBSD or NetBSD, will it 
in most cases also apply to OpenBSD.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this and try to understand me.

Shane Broomhall

Brisbane Australia