Thanks, duly noted for the future. I ended up re-installing anyways, not so much that I didn't want to deal with the video driver, but I wanted to revisit the install, and try to see if the install would work with wireless. As far as I could tell, it wasn't so much recognizing the wireless that was the problem,
rather it did not recognize the existence of a dhcp server on the linksys box. But I was able to manually configure a fixed ip/subnet/gateway etc., after adjusting the ip range on the router so as not to cause a conflict. Right now I'm working without a GUI, I'll stick with that for a while and see how far I can take it. At the moment I can ping to the outside world using a domain name, but I couldn't connect to a mirror during the install. So right now I am focusing on basic TCP/IP
Lots of fun, I needed something new to play with and stay out of the bar.