I'm in the same boat. I had a D-Link DWL-500, which I couldn't make work.
It turns out that between revs, D-Link changed chip sets, and some (the TI ones)
simply have no linux support whatsoever. After asking around in the
Networking > Wireless Networking forum on this site, I found that the NetGear MA311
ALWAYS works under linux, and all revs of the card use the same
Prism II/Orinoco chipset. A week ago I went to amazon and bought one,
and after asking more questions to this site, got it up and running on
my desktop system. The NetGear MA311 is a PCI, not a PCMCIA.
Here is the pointer someone here gave me:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/index.php
Go to the Network Cards part. Under NetGear, I have no idea
why there are two different listings for the MA311.
Good luck.