Your chip has some problems however it will work. I have a thinkpad x61. When I followed the tips from the opensuse 10.3 release notes it did the trick. The following is a list of steps to check for a wireless connection. There was a site with an excellent description of all the steps but..I can not find it, so I hope this does it ;-) It may help you find where the problem is.
But again before you go through it go to yast and the network card and disable the knetwork manager, delete the module and it will load the new one and try with up and down few times. Also go to starbucks and see if you can access the hot spot. In some cases the problem is with the wireless router (yes I know it works with windows :-)) so if you can use it in starbucks you have to look at a problem with the router.
Wireless troubleshooting
(1) Be sure the wireless hardware switch is on
(2) Open xterm
and become root
(3) Is the chip recognized or exist?
#lspci | grep -i Wireless
(4) Which wireless interfaces you have in your machine?
# iwconfig
find wireless interface for example eth1 or wlan0. Use this interface for all the commands.
If you do not have a wireless interface:
a. you do not have a wireless card and that would have shown in step 3 or
b. you do not have the correct module installed just #lsmod and see if yours is listed
If the interface has an IP great, if not dhcpd did not work. Any messages?
(5) Can you see any wireless network around?
# iwlist (interface) scanning
for example iwlist eth1 scanning
This shows the MAC address of any remote wireless access points (or peers if in AdHoc mode?).
If you can not find anything to connect:
a) remove interference: turn off microwaves, turnoff cordless phones (mainly 2.4)
b) move close to access point
(6) Setting:
Mode: if you are connecting to and access point -> Managed Mode.
Channel is determined automatically.
ESSID:you can't connect to an AccessPoint unless you are both using the same ESSID!
Network: this is the IP address.
Manually you can setup those paramters:
iwconfig eth2 mode Managed
iwconfig eth2 essid "secret_password"
In Managed Mode the channel is setup automatically.
check up after the setup:
# iwconfig eth1
If problems:
(a) turn the interface down and up see below and the run iwconfig again.
(b) be sure the ESSID are the same in the router and card
(7) Check connection
$ ping -c2 google.com
(8) How to bring the interface UP or DOWN.
# ifdown eth1
#ifup wlan0
Note: ifup and ifdown work IF the Knetworkmanager is not enable (opensuse)
Some user had problems with the Knetworkmanager. I did not.
(8) Try unloading the kernel module for the card and reloading it
(9) Miscellaneous tips:
9.1 It can be some interaction between the wireless and the wired chips. If you want to use wired interface when you are plugged to a cat5 cable and wireless when you are not, set both devices to power up on cable connection (YaST -> Network Devices -> Network Card -> Advanced -> Detailed Settings -> Device Activation)
9.2 If nothing works you can always try with ndswrapper
http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000167
http://www.andrewd18.com/ndiswrapper/
I do not have any experience with it.
9.3 This is the site for the new module, the one I am using, however I use the one from the opensuse repository that is installed with yast.
http://intellinuxwireless.org/
-=terry=-