Mandrake screwed something up so badly that it's loading the wvlan_cs module, which is so depricated as to be almost useless, especially with any orinoco firmware released in the past year and change. You might want to download the hermes.conf file so it'll use the right module.
Also, how to change settings?
dhcpcd -k eth1(to whack the old connection, assuming you're walking with the laptop live between two Wlans)
ifconfig eth1 up
iwconfig eth1 essid nameofnetwork
iwconfig eth1 enc 12312313
dhcpcd eth1
I wouldn't worry about the version mismatch from wireless extensions in the kernel and wireless tools, that's just Mandrake getting their utilities ahead of their kernel. Mine are off by 3 and work fine... well, off by 3,2, and 2 depending on the machine.
The major thing I think is the old WEP bug where with the wvlan_cs module (which your machine may be alright with), a default encryption is set and depending on the difference between your firmware and version 6.04, you might not be able to change it withough hacking it out of /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts
Like I said, it'll be much easier if you download this file:
http://ozlabs.org/people/dgibson/dldwd/hermes.conf
and add it to /etc/pcmcia/
Cheers,
Finegan