this post is way after the fact but for anyone else stumbling across this here's your solution.
I recently purchased the same orinoco card -> 8470-wd gold
It is an Antheros chipset and you can use the madwifi drivers
http://madwifi.sourceforge.net/
I happen to be on gentoo so an -> emerge madwifi-driver -> would do the trick.
once you have built the modules :
On gentoo:
su to root
modprobe wlan; modprobe ath_hal; modprobe ath_pci;
(yes in that order)
your device is now ath0
now use the command 'iwconfig' (part of wireless-tools -> emerge wireless-tools)
to setup your essid...wep key...etc etc etc... whatever the case is for your network
Ex:
iwconfig ath0 key XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
iwconfig ath0 channel 6
iwconfig ath0 essid linksys
iwconfig ath0 rate auto
(X's would be 26 hex values / 128bit wep encryption..... hex values are from 0 through f for super newbs)
do a 'man iwconfig' for more uses.
setup /etc/conf.d/net for iface_ath0 as you would any nic
(see gentoo's network card installation for more info on starting at boot time etc / multiples cards)
cd /etc/init.d
./net.ath0 start
bring up...blah blah blah
assuming you've entered everything correctly you should be up and ready for hours of wasting time on the net.
For those interested in wardriving airsnort and kismet will work without anything special done such as the previous orinoco chipset needing the patched driver.
Just set your card into Monitor mode -> iwconfig ath0 mode Monitor
and fire up airsnort.... set to ath0 and "other" and have fun scanning
If you would like a quick way to scan for available networks you can use iwlist
iwlist ath0 scanning
Unfortunately I didn't have much luck getting the drivers to compile for kernel 2.6
but that doesn't mean you ***can't*** get it to work somehow
