So I decided to give ndiswrapper another shot and I made some progress. It didnt freeze at the modprobe command this time for some reason. I made it all the way to the "pump -i wlan0" command but it fails to get an ip address. Any ideas on what I can try or why it may be doing this. I've been trying every network config manager I can find in knoppix. Here is a copy/paste of exactly what I did and what happened when I did it. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

knoppix@Knoppix:~$ su
root@Knoppix:/home/knoppix# ndiswrapper -i /media/sda1/drivers/w
ireless/NETMA111.INF
installing netma111 ...
root@Knoppix:/home/knoppix# modprobe ndiswrapper
root@Knoppix:/home/knoppix# lsmod | grep ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper 200900 0
root@Knoppix:/home/knoppix# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11b Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz
Access Point: Not-Associated Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
Encryption keyff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag
:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon
:0

root@Knoppix:/home/knoppix# iwconfig wlan0 essid 2WIRE494 channe
l 1 key 7691841121
root@Knoppix:/home/knoppix# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"2WIRE494"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-A
ssociated
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
Encryption key:7691-8411-21 Security mode:restricted
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag
:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon
:0

root@Knoppix:/home/knoppix# ifconfig wlan0 up
root@Knoppix:/home/knoppix# ifconfig
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:100 (100.0 B) TX bytes:100 (100.0 B)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:09:5b:42:99:16
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

root@Knoppix:/home/knoppix# pump -i wlan0
Operation failed.
root@Knoppix:/home/knoppix#