OK, just to clarify...

There does not seem to be a copy of the Zydas driver in the normal places, so not surprisingly, dmesg shows that there's an unrecognized usb device.

Using the ndiswrapper that Knoppix has, I am able to "install" the appropriate files, but at the end of the install I get a message that the driver was successfully installed, but that no devices appear to make use of it. Looking at the ndiswrapper script and at dmesg, this seems to be a known condition, and occurs when the usb loader can't recognize the device id for the usb device that is attached.

As such, my assumption is that I either patch the kernel and compile the Zydas driver and install it - or that there is something I'm missing in configuring ndiswrapper to add the device id so it was recognized.

I am hoping that someone out there may have either this device (ideally), or have another device that uses this chip, that could provide their expertise in getting this working. Otherwise I will probably reinstall to the HD, do the kernel patch, and compile the driver. That isn't my preference (a bit time consuming on a PII 266), but preferable to having to run downstairs and take turns with the kids to access the internet

Thanks,
Ewan