I finally dnloaded, decompressed, compiled and installed the 2.4.18  kernel successfully. I saw there was a patch file so I dnloaded it as well. Since I had decompressed the patch I went ahead and applied it with:
patch -p0 < patch-2.4.18

>From this point I started getting messages like:

patching file linux/arch/cris/drivers/ethernet.c
Reversed (or previously applied patch detected! Assume -R? [n]
Apply anyway? [n]

I answered n to both these questions then got the reply:
skipping patch.

38 out of 38 hunks ignored -- saving rejects to file linux/arch/cris/drivers/ethernet.c.rej

I would assume that since I recently dnloaded the kernel and installed it that the patch is already applied to my image. Is this correct?