8.04 LTS did not recognize it either although it sees the belkin G card fine. 8.10 also sees the belkin G card but neither reckognize the N1 card. any idea why?

Don't have a clue what a N1 card is.. how about posting the output from lspci so we have something to work with.
Then we might be able to suggest a driver to load, etc..

Thanks

P.S. if it's a laptop card then you may need to post lspcmcia also or for a USB adapter lsusb

There is 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n; the main difference is reception range.
Thanks so much for your help and here are the results you requested.

00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation Device 07c3 (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce 630i memory controller (rev a2)
00:01.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce 630i memory controller (rev a1)
00:01.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce 630i memory controller (rev a1)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce 630i memory controller (rev a1)
00:01.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce 630i memory controller (rev a1)
00:01.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce 630i memory controller (rev a1)
00:01.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce 630i memory controller (rev a1)
00:01.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce 630i memory controller (rev a1)
00:02.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce 630i memory controller (rev a1)
00:03.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP73 LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:03.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP73 SMBus (rev a1)
00:03.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP73 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:03.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP73 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 7100/nForce 630i (rev a1)
00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP73 [nForce 630i] USB 2.0 Controller (EHCI) (rev a1)
00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP73 IDE (rev a1)
00:09.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP73 High Definition Audio (rev a1)
00:0a.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP73 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP73 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP73 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP73 PCI Express bridge (rev a1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation Device 07f0 (rev a2)
00:0f.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation MCP73 Ethernet (rev a2)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV535 [Radeon X1650 Series]
02:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV535 [Radeon X1650 Series]

Well I see your Wired Network card.. but I do NOT see anything that resembles a wireless card.. neither Belkin G or N is in that list.

How is the wireless card connected to your PC ? if it's pcmcia or USB please use the commands I provided in my previous post to list the bus the device is connected to.

desktop pc wireless NIC is connected via PCI internal bus. OS is just not recognizing it. model for this card is F5D8001, i have the driver from the disk set in ndiswrapper but ndiswrapper says the hardware is not present and i know it works because i tested it on another tower.

Is the card fully seated in the PCI slot ?

lspci is not listing the card and the card should be listed, whether it's working or not in Linux, if it is installed in the PC.

I have swapped out a G card with this N card many different times to t-shoot but for some reason when this card is put in this machine my linux will not recognize it. Windows sees it fine though.

just put it into a different pci slot and booted into windows after having removed it, installed just fine and works perfectly.
shut down and booted into ubuntu 8.10 removed and reinstalled the driver in ndiswrapper but hardware present:no still shows also my lspci is exactly the same down to the letter.
so very lost here, i need this for backtrack 3 and this is supposed to work "right out of the box" according to backtrack's web site but i cant get it or ubuntu to even acknowledge the card period

work out of the box..

according to the fsf wireless page that card would use the ath9k Driver.
http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/net/wireless/cards.html
I still don't understand why Linus is not seeing it though..

for grins did you check under lsusb and lspcmcia ?
(even though I would think it should be listed under lspci for a desktop PC)

This is the Belkin N1 desktop card not the notebook card, dont know if that changes anything on that driver compatability but yeah i ran the other konsole commands and found no pcmia and root-hub and my printer under lsusb. still lost here

I'm rather stumped at this point.. if the system is not seeing it I can't tell you how to proceed