Hi!

Does anyone has some advice how to get such combination working?
I have Linksys WPC11 pcmcia adapter (which worked well with Slack-10.2/2.6.16.x).

What i get now is (std install, kernel 2.6.21.7, the last supported by wlan-ng 0.2.8):
pcmcia system recognizes adapter and loads the right module; somehow adapter gets its wlan0 ID, and even gets the configuration from rc.inet1.conf (wlan section).
But. The only way to see the adapter is ifconfig -a; just ifconfig doesn't show wlan0;
iwconfig says that wlan0 does not have wireless extensions.

Actually, i do not care very much how to get it working; what i want to keep is the ability to fool around with kismet...

What i learned from udev's 75-network-devices.rules is that for unknown reasons it assigns (?) MAC 00:00:00:00:00:00 to the wlan0.
If i write the correct one, udev ignores it and makes new wlan device with the mentioned MAC and when i insert the adapter, it udevs gives it to former.

I suppose that's for softmac devices. Just my guess. What happens if you comment that section in 75-udev.rules, so that udev doesn't mess with wlan0?

If I comment out this line, udev adds another one identical to it.

If I write in this file MAC adress of wifi adapter which must be assigned wlan0, udev ignores it and adds another line with zeros as MAC.

There is another one stranginess - the pcmcia card fires up only after insert-remove-insert - may be such behaviour also plays some role here?

Udev is rewriting the rules after you've edited them? Are you rebooting or restarting udev after making the edits? Are you editing the file as root so that you can save the changes?

My laptop, a HP Pavilion ze4315, does the same thing with pcmcia cards. If I have it inserted before I turn the power on it's detected during startup. If the OS is already started I have to insert, remove and insert a second time. It's been like that since Slack10 or since I started using 2.6.x kernels.

I missed this part the first time. Make sure the kernel has the wireless extensions built. Browse your kernels's config file and make sure MAC80211 and IEEE80211 are either y or m. If your device is softmac you need MAC80211.

EDIT: I just looked at the 75-network_devices.rules. It gets the address from the information in /sys. So, upon detection, your device is being given all 0's as the MAC address and udev gets it from there. I think your problem lies with the driver and/or the missing wireless extensions.