Some minor progress on this issue over the past 24 hours ..

Running out of ideas, I booted Knoppix without the WG511 PCMCIA card. (This is the "original" WG5111 adapter, with a chipset from Prism.) Once Knoppix was running, I inserted the card, issued "ifconfig eth0 down" and "ifconfig eth1 up" from root .. and one of the card lights came on.

"ifconfig -a" now showed eth1 as active; and "iwlist scanning" then listed several networks -- including mine, and some belonging to neighbors -- so clearly the card was seeing the access point.

But even after setting the WEP key via iwconfig eth1 I couldn't reach the router or anything beyond the access point. A ping to the router "worked" (for a change), in that the ping reported network not reachable; yesterday the ping never started as eth1 wasn't "there."

Running the network card setup served only to disable the card entirely when a DHCP broadcast failed. Another "ifconfig eth1 up" was needed, etc.

Once again, I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on further tests or changes here. I have found that the WG5111 works with Linspire v5.0 and with a Live CD of Ubuntu .. but what I really would like is for Knoppix to be happier with it.

Thanks .. !

Wayne