well, a dell true mobile card is an orinoco card, you need to load the module for that driver. you need to make sure you have wireless-tools installed (or whatever the package is that provides iwconfig) i have pump installed to pull a dhcp lease, thats what i recommend, once you have the orinoco driver loaded, do a "ifconfig -a" and see if you see your wireless ethernet card, then use iwconfig to set the ssid and key (if you have a specific ssid and key set) and then try pulling a dhcp lease (i use pump so it's "pump -i <interface>", on my box it's eth0 so i use "pump -i eth0"). as for breaking your router, that sucks if thats the case
