unrecognized wireless cards (slax live-cd recognizes one)

I have IBM ThinkPad 390 2626-70U with Knoppix 3.7 installed on the hard-drive and then I've been updating to the latest/greatest of what's available using apt-get update and apt-get upgrade. I have a Belkin Wireless G Router, model # F5D7230-4. I have an SMC EZ Connect g Wireless Cardbus Adapter, model # SMC2835W. Absolutely everything has been done to make the wireless router wide open so as to lessen the chances of other issues interfering with making a connection to it. I have not gotten the SMC wireless card to work in any form or fashion with any version of Knoppix, whether from a Live-CD or from what's on my hard-drive, nor with any other public wireless access points. The card is seen (lspci shows output for it) but that's it. No connection, nada. I've run wavelan to make it connect to anything. No connection, nada. On a lark I tried FreeSBIE v1.1 and SLAX v5.0.5 Live-CDs. The SMC card didn't connect in either case. Using SLAX did cause some interesting errors when booting the SLAX Live-CD.

I tried a couple other borrowed wireless cards. One in particular was the Netgear MA401, an 802.11b card. It didn't work with Knoppix in the limited testing I tried, but it *DID* work with the SLAX Live-CD! I now have one a Neargear MA401 on order that will arrive in a few days.

I wonder, does anyone knows how to make my SMC card to work (given I already have it)?

I also wonder, if the Netgear MA401 works with the SLAX Live-CD then what would it take to make it work with Knoppix?

Thank you,
Joel