Okay, that's good news and bad news, Gary.

Good because that's the way I did it. Bad, because that's the way I did it. Yet the Joomla bridge config doesn't recognize an installation. Does this mean I need to move some things around?
If I need to dump on install, I can uninstall SMF and I can uninstall the JoomlaSMF component if I really need to. But I need to know what I should do differently.
I installed SMF from Fantastico, then updated it manually with my FTP client and SMF's upgrade.php component. JoomlaSMF was installed in the usual Joomla fashion.
I need to know where I need to do things differently. Let me know if you need more information.
Wait a minute,if you install smf with Fantastico it gets its own database.
No.
Install Joomla with fantastico, than manually install SMF making sure the SMF tables are intalled in the Joomla database and nowhere else.
The SMF_ prefix thingie will work fine.
ricland