I have a Toshiva A70 laptop with a builtin Atheros ar5004g wireless. am running Slackware 10.1. I have MadWifi and get no attempt of conecting.
iwconfig yeilds
ath0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate:0kb/s Tx-Power:50 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retryff RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0/94 Signal level:-95 dBm Noise level:-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
if config shows eth0 which is my wired connection and lo
I have tried from Slackware 9 to 10.1 and kernel from 2.2 to 2.6.11
tried with mandrake fedora suse just to see if they did anything different and no, actually they didnt work as well. and i am most famillar.
any help with this would be really great.

If you are not wedded to the distro, you might try the live CD of SimplyMEPIS 3.3, which is particularly good at picking up internal cards on laptops and can save you a lot of grief.

thank you for the reply. I have tried knoppix 3.2 3.4 3.7 3.8 slax klax mepis catux and a few others. I hadnt (untill now) considered my self too bad at linux. I have used it for years. I am at a loss why i cant get this.

Can you give us some additional information? I am not highly advanced, but can steer you through some of the basics.

What can you expect for this card? Have you checked out the hardware compatibility database at http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz

What does dmesg say about your card? Does it look like it's being installed on boot?

Have you run a search of your card'sname on this forum and Google?

Have you thought about using ndiswrapper which uses the card's driver (you can get it from the manufacturer using Google)

Hope some of this is helpful.