On my compaq nc8000 with an ipw2200 chipset, there is a button to activate the wireless interface. The light doesn't come on when you enable it, but if you load the ipw2200 module with the interface disabled, dmesg will say something like
{{{
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.0.3
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2004 Intel Corporation
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:04.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On:
Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work.
}}}
You can also check what some of the settings are for the device in the directory /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw2200/0000:02:04.0 (the numbers part might be different for you)
You can check the status of the kill switch be cat'ing rf_kill in the above directory, then reference the doc below for the status of the interface.
Check in the docs for the ipw2200 driver for sysfs helper files and you can have a look at the device settings or check
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/README.ipw2200
Ryan