Okay, I admit I am a linux novice, however, I have been trying off and on for months now to get my wireless network to work with Knoppix on my laptop. The required settings are actually simple, but it took me a while to figure out exactly what would work with my particular hardware and network.

These settings are used for a Dell Latitude C600 with a Orinoco Classic Gold card to connect to a D-Link DI-614+ wireless router using WEP.

During Knoppix boot up the auto configuration manager will recognize the Orinoco card inside my PCMCIA slot and the card manager will set it up as eth0, however, it will not be configured completely. Also, I was never able to get everything setup properly by running the Wavelan configuration utility.

So, I got access to a root shell by selecting KNOPPIX|Root Shell from the applications browser.

I must have the following configuration settings on the wireless card:
ESSID: "your_wireless_network_name"
Bit Rate: 11Mb/s (setup automatically -- "iwconfig eth0 rate auto" not required)
Mode: Managed (setup automatically -- "iwconfig eth0 mode Managed" not required)
Frequency: 2.437GHz (channel 6) (setup automatically -- "iwconfig eth0 channel 6" not required)
Security mode: restricted
Encryption keyxx-xxx-etc_in_hex

I just need to enter the following commands to force the above settings:
iwconfig eth0 ESSID your_wireless_network_name
iwconfig eth0 key restricted sxxxxx-etc_in_ascii

After all the above configuration steps have been made, I enter the following command to send a DHCP packet to the wireless router:
pump -i eth0

And it finally works!

Perhaps this message will assist other users that have the same or similar hardware to mine.

Jonathan