Kwlan Reports no Radio

[borgward]

I was at a coffee shop. I booted up two laptops. I connected w/Window laptop, but not W/Linux
laptop. The laptops are identical Dell Latitude CPi PII. Knoppix 5.1.1 on one
and XP on the other. Both work at home. They both connect automatically
at home, using wireless. Both run Netgear PCMCIA wireless cards. The
Linux lap has a Netgear MA401. I do not know which Netgear card is in
the XP lap. Both are 802.11b. These PCi are pretty old, and did not come
w/Wireless, MODEM, or Ethernet. I have to use a Netgear USB Ethernet
adaptor if I want to connect to a Cat 5 cable.

Kwlan reported :

eth0 is disconnected (however though, it's indicator light was blinkingwhich I take to indicate that it was on, but not connected)

The radio is off

The scan results window comes up empty.

On the windows machine, I clicked on the wireless icon and then clicked
on "View wireless conections" then clicked on "The Coffee House" and
then entered the access code they gave me.

I guess the question is why did the windows machine see their signal,
and the Linux machine not? Any thing I can ask them?

Both machines connected automatically after I got home.

I have had this problem at some other free WiFi spots.

Any way to get connected? The people there are nice, but seem to be
clueless. They set up their own wireless. They do not have anybody
administrating their stuff..

A few years ago I heard about some businesses offering free WiFi blocking out anybody not uisng Microsoft Windows. Has anybody hear of similar stories?

[WindWarrior]

I get the same result on my hp laptop when using knoppix 5.1. If i do a iwconfig in a console, it will say radio off. i have to physically turn the wifi switch on. Also, the laptop switches the wifi off when i close the lid...which is a bit of a pain...