Laptops :: Installing dsl on IBM R50e

Hello, I am planning on installing Damn Small Linux on my laptop (IBM R50e - Cel. M 1.3Ghz, 512 RAM etc). I am planning on doing an HDinstall (since I use only one system, and I don't really feel I have the knowledge to do a frugal install).
I have a few concerns, I would like to clear up before I go ahead with the install:

1) All IBM laptops come with a rescue partition, and a way to access it (I am guessing some kind of boot manager though it's not explicit) -- after installing dsl will I be able to keep both my regular Windows system and the rescue one (I know i will keep the windows one but what about the rescue?)

2) Power maintenance -- is there a tutorial to set up all the power management options on a laptop (i.e. lid closing, battery schemes etc) or does dsl provide that "out of the box"

3) Wireless - I have a Netgear MA521 wireless PCMCIA card -- does anyone have experience getting such a card to run, and is it possible?

4) How does it behave with external usb sound cards -- I have a Philips Aurilium 5.1 external card (on top of the embedded one), i know it recognizes it but are there proper drivers and so on?

Thanks, all comments and suggestions will be appreciated

Not sure about this on your machine, but I have worked on older IBM's that the bios is also stored on the hard drive. I had to order a floppy from IBM to fix it after I formated the hd.
Proceed with caution.

well i believe this is not a problem with mine
i was able to achieve 3 way bootability (xp, rescue, and linux)
but still the other topics are open

original here.