There was MAC authorization and I disabled it, so that should not be factor. I also figured out how to use iwconfig to control which wireless router to use. If I run 'iwconfig eth0 essid linksys3140' (for the Linksys WRT54G) and ran 'pump -i eth0' the result of pump is "Operation failed." If I run 'iwconfig eth0 essid belkin54g' (for the Belkin FSD7230-4) then 'pump -i eth0' I get a connection to my Belkin wireless router. At least, in this case, I can make sure I'm not trapped by a connection by what amounts to a useless wireless connection. I would appreciate any thoughts folks may have on this.

I can still connect to linksys3140 without passwords/keys from Windows/XP. I do notice the Linksys takes a while to respond to a DHCP request, so I wonder if there's a way to make pump wait longer before it gives up on it's DHCP request. Anyone have any ideas in this area?

I have seen folks reporting issues with kwifimanager 3.5.2, specifically about the ability to select a network. I did run kwifimanager with kdesu, just in case anyone wonders about this. It seems using iwconfig works around my issues with kwifimanager.