lost dhcp on boot up

[Paul Schwartz <brpms@earthlink.net>]

I just made and installed my first kernel [2.4.18]! and booted too!
One problem is that the network initialization that used to occur 
[2.4.18-bf24] doesn't.
The ether net card is recognized but my machine no longer does an 
inquiry to the router to get an address.

Where do I find the stimulus?

Nother issue:  I thought I was compiling the ALSA driver into the 
kernel, but dmesg says

No ALSA driver installed
Starting ALSA sound driver (version none): modprobe: Can't lodcate 
module snd  failed

On the other hand sound is now working for the first time.  Any idea 
what happened?

Thanks

Paul Schwartz