For a long time i scoured this forum looking for the bug fix to get my 2 thinkpad600 s talking using 2 orinoco cards , eventually, a friend did this, and it worked.

as root

ifconfig eth0 essid pepe mode ad-hoc channel 1 rate auto nick pepe1 frag off rts off

then

ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0

i did this to both machines (pepe1- 192.168.0.1 and pepe2 - 192.168.0.2)
and waddya know, it worked