LinuxQuestions.org - Netgear MA521 pcmcia wlan card

I have enormous problems getting the MA521 card to work on a gentoo system using kernel 2.4.22 vanilla and the rtl8180_24x.o driver from realtek, which i read should be able to drive the card.

i have the following loaded modules:

rtl_8180_24x
ds
trident
ac97_codec
yenta_socket
pcmcia_core
rtc
8139too
mii
crc32

cat /proc/rtl8180/status gives me:

rtl8180_pci_driver version 1.4 loaded
the network is configured as infrastructure mode.
macaddr=00:09:.......
ioaddr=0x9800
irq=11

Link Fail!

Channel number=0
beacon period=100
BSSID=0x00 0x11 ....
SSID=aptest2
Capability = 0x00
AID= 0x00
operational rates=<1><2><5.5><11>Mbps
current tx operational rates=<1>Mbps

iwconfig gives me the warning
"Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled iwth version 0 of Wireless Extension, while this program is using version 15. Some things may be broken..."

[dont know if thats important...]

wlan0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:off/any Nickname:""
.....

i read a lot about iwpriv and stuff... but whenever i do iwpriv wlan0 enable,
my laptop freezes completely. when i then remove the pcmcia card, i get a kernel panic(which is not much difference to the freeze, except for some nice cryptic adresses)

i can sucessfully assign the wlan0 device an ip adress with ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.150 for example, but thats no use.

my access point has wep turned off and broadcasts its ssid.
(for testing)

i tried the whole thing already with the linux-wlan-ng drivers, but they didnt even make me a wlan0 device. the rtl8180_24x seems to be the only driver thats able to drive this card, but i dont know what the problem is....

any help is greatly appreciated, i have been working on this problem for a week now - unsuccessful