Of course it's not a network card exactly.

I get boot errors with the HD install of Knoppix 6 so I haven't been able to check out if it works as well off the HD as it does with the LiveCD.

OR compare the net configuration files to see what's different between how the two distributions handle it.

5.1 actually recognizes the device, connects to the device in kwlan and allows me to put in my SSID and WEP key and that's as far as it goes.

netcardconf from the Knoppix menu (the penguin) gives me "no network card... press return to exit"

Freespire does much the same thing, has a little pop-up that says "connection in progress" and a picture of a little spinning sprocket, goes to "28%" and will do that for basically forever.

Both will give me the "Firefox could not open the page" error when I check on the progress with opening the browser.

Adriane picks it up automatically, lets me sign in and connect (after asking me to set a keyring password)

Where can I find the differences in the network configuration files?