Help providing wireless Internet access to Ipaq from linuxbox

Hi, I am trying to setup my linuxbox to simply provide internet and
mail etc. to my ipaq and laptop over a SMC smcwpci-g wireless card with
a realtek chipset. My Suse 10 system correctly id'd and setup my card
as wlan0 but I have no experience setting up a wireless network. Do i
need to setup an actual access point? Is that even possible with the
chipset i have since it appears that hostap does not work with this
card. Is an access point the same thing as a simple wireless lan? I
mean, basically, All I want is for my wireless card to act just as my
wired card and no more. I have two wired NIC's in my machine. Once
brings DSL into my linux box and the other sends it out NAT'd to a hub
that provides networking to four other machines. This is all by wire.
Is it possible to just route traffic NAT'd from an ethX device to wlanX
so that i can have internet access on my ipaq and my laptop? ANy help
anyone can provide in helping me to understand this better would be
great. I have looked all over the net and can't seem to find exactly
what i am looking for. Thanks..