Ejecting a PCMCIA network card, either physically or via "cardctl eject", causes the PCMCIA driver to hang. Further insert/eject events are ignored. As a workaround, adding the following lines to /etc/pcmcia/network somehow avoids the problem: exec 1>/dev/console exec 2>/dev/console (Actually, I didn't discover this workaround--someone on the Linux PCMCIA discussion list did. For more info, see http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/install/220/1/1.html .)
This appears to be machine-specific. Can you let us know which pcmcia driver chip you have on your laptop, and which pcmcia network card you have?