pcmcia is indeed a funny slot, usually lobbed on the right hand side of laptops. unless you really need pcmcia then you might as well get rid of it. bare in mind though that your modem might use that slot (obviously disabling it would be bad).
pcmcia support in linux is usually quite good, however it sounds like either your laptop isn;t compatible with the driver red hat chose or it isn;t compatible at all (unlikely).
to disable it (warning, ive never used red hat so may not be the best to ask) you need to probably edit the startup scripts (that's what i would do in slackware linux). there may be a nifty program that red hat has given you that i don;t know about. ask someone else in this forum to tell you bout the procedure.
the whole red hat thing annoyed me, hence the reason i went to slackware :-)
Alex
P.S. sorry that was sod all help to you but i have no lap top and never used red hat.
oh btw, try looking for your laptop at
http://www.linux-laptop.net
this site should help you getting things working for you laptop.