This is Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, ver. 7.04.

Wireless card is D-Link WDA 2320. It is madwifi and works on others as long as madwifi is installed. I have used Synaptic Pkg. Mgr. to download all the MadWiFi packages.

Return from: uname -r

2.6.20-16-386

Output of lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82815 815 Chipset Host Bridge and Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82815 815 Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801BA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801BA IDE U100 (rev 01)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM SMBus (rev 01)
01:0c.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (rev 06)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage 128 PF/PRO AGP 4x TMDS

So I think the bus isn't "seeing" the card. One of the two LEDs does blink, so the card, at least, has power.

I added this line to /boot/grub/menu.lst:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic root=UUID=70d0a61f-7453-46d4-85ad-1373ef99813a ro quiet splash noapic nolapic pci=assign-busses

rebooted. Card still not found. And I tried a slightly different line:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-11-generic root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash pci=assign-busses

still the card isn't found at the output of lspci is as above posted at the beginning of this thread.

The BIOS has no options for much of anything in this line, this computer was mfg. around 2000.

I've googled: wda2320 lscpi detect; wda 2320 lscpi detect and a host of other permutations. Not much luck, or I wouldn't be here. Thanks for your time in reading this.

That's the card I have, but mine does show up in the output of lspci:

Since you say the card works "on others" I assume you have verified that this is not a hardware problem and the card is functioning correctly. Check it out with a livecd if you are not sure; the card should show up in lspci.
If you are satisfied that this is not a hardware problem you can try some other pci options like:

pci=biosirq

You can also run this immediately after booting:

$ dmesg

which will print out all the kernel boot messages and see if there is anything in there about the card which will give you a clue as to what's going on.

I do not know about this particular case but a lot of these manufacturers switch chipsets without changing the model number. That could explain why some people have it show up in lspci and others do not.

As it turned out, the card itself is bad. It has been changed for a (hopefully) working one. The output of lspci shows it as on the bus.

output of lshw -C network says;
unclaimed ethernet controller, etc.

output of iwconfig

no wireless extension

anybody know what's missing?

It's probably a driver issue. Have you installed the madwifi package?
If so you can verify that the madwifi driver is loading with:

$ sudo lsmod | grep ath

It should print out the ath_pci module and some other related ones. If not, try loading the module with:

$ sudo modprobe ath_pci

then check for wireless extensions with:

$ sudo iwconfig

mark@Lexington:~$ sudo lsmod | grep ath
mark@Lexington:~$ sudo modprobe ath_pci
WARNING: Could not open '/lib/modules/2.6.20-16-386/volatile/ath_hal.ko': No such file or directory
FATAL: Error inserting ath_pci (/lib/modules/2.6.20-16-386/madwifi/ath_pci.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)
mark@Lexington:~$ sudo iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.