Huh. The only event log stuff that's identifiable as related to the card is an Information event in the system events:
Winport opened COM1 as a client, for connecting to network modems.

This is followed by an error 3 seconds later:
The mrtRate service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified.

I'm afraid I have no idea what that stuff means, except that I guess the PCMCIA card is using COM1...which, now that I think about it, was a cause of crashes back in the days before plug-n-play....

The laptop does boot into safe mode fine, but it shows no trace of the card, I think probably because there's not PCMCIA support in safe mode.

Frustrating....you guys are more patient than me!


EDIT: Actually, I just tried safe mode again, and it seems to boot up okay, giving me the GUI and everything, but then it freezes as though I had just inserted the card.