pcmcia and newer kernels

Hi, I reinstalled 7.3 ( new hard drive ) last week. I want to use a newer suse kernel than the one included on the dvd, I find my orinoco card hangs on large transfers and was wondering if a newer one would have updated source code. do I need to do anything extra apart from installing the suse kernel rpms. eg recompile pcmcia stuff. I ask, because up until now, I compiled pcmcia stuff by hand and never seemed to get the boot sequence working properly, ie nfs used to fail because pcmcia hadnt finished initialising. dids