Wireless on Mandriva is either dead easy or fairly easy, depending on which exact version of Mandriva you're talking about, and also exactly what chipset your wireless has....
numnuts87 - did you ever get this sorted ?, if not have a read here - http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/563575 then get back to us...
On my ubuntu 7.04 system several old wireless cards failed, and then I discovered the Airlink101 which works great! $30, and it goes up to 108mbps.