Slack 9 problems!!!

["Thomas D. Ward" <tward1978@earthlink.net>]

Hello, list. If anyone could please help solve these issues I would
appreciate it right now. Coming from a Red Hat background I am completely
and absolutely frustrated with Slackware's lack of features and setup tools,
and am at a loss to get the basic functionality of the system even working.

Issue one.
In Red Hat it comes with the kudzu pnp maniger which detects such things as
network cards, and other devices and automatically configures them, and puts
them in /etc/modules.conf. Slackware it appears does not remotely have
anything that nice, and I am left wondering if it pnp's anything, or do I
have to insmod every single module I need, and have to manually configure
everything?
Issue two:
I assume any modules that need to be loaded on startup need to be loaded in
/etc/modules. However, without seeing a /etc/modules I do not know the
syntax, and how it is suppose to look. For example in /etc/modules.conf in
Red Hat to load my nic it would look like:
alias eth0 ne2pci
Is the same true under Slackware or is it completely different.
Issue three:
Does something special have to be done with setting up modems under
Slackware? I tried sending a simple dial string to my modem on every serial
port, and I did not get a blip, beep, pop, etc.
Which means Slackware can not find my modem. since Slackware is so alien to
me I am not surprised, but I also can not get it going.
issue four:
How on earth do you activate and turn off services under Slackware!!!!! I
tried chkconfig and service and Slackware mouthed off at me saying that they
didn't exist. Mandrake and Red Hat have these tools, and I assumed that
service and chkconfig were like universal tools for loading and killing
services. What on earth does Slackware use?
Issue five:
I can not find my module for my nic in the installed modules. Naturally, I
even though I am dreading the thought I assume I have to compile a from
scratch kernel. Something I never had to do regularly with Red Hat. Where is
the slackware kernel source, and I hope it has speakup built in, because
there is no way I can reach speakup's cvs server under present condition.
Well, I think that is a start, and when I solve these five issues I will ask
more questions I have. Unfortunately, the list is quite long at this point.