I will try to give as much detail, please ask if I left something out.

I'm running vectorlinux soho 5.0.1
I have a linksys wpc54g v5 pcmcia card Here is the cardctl ident shows.

Socket 0:
product info: "Marvell Semiconductor", "88W8310 802.11g Cardbus PC Card", "83", "01"
manfid: 0x02df, 0x8310
function: 6 (network)

I have run ndiswrapper -i to set up the driver, here is ndiswrapper -l

root:# ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
2802w driver present
airplus driver present
bcmwl5 driver present
bcmwl5a driver present
gplus driver present
lsbcmnds driver present
mrv8k51 driver present, hardware present
mrv8ka51 driver present, hardware present
net8180 driver present
netadm11 driver present
netdlwl driver present
ntpr11ab driver present
w70n51 driver present

I tried running modprobe ndiswrapper after installing driver and it looked like it ran ok.

when I run iwconfig wlan0 here is what i get

root:# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

the power led on the card is not lit. kinfo and cardctl ident both show a card there.

I currently can not get my card up and running. What are my next steps?

ok... I think you're problem is that you have a ton of drivers installed for wireless chipsets, BUT you don't have the driver for your card installed. Sooooo... I would go back to ndiswrapper and go to the list they have of supported cards and (if you're using firefox...you definitely should be) search the list for linksys wpc54g and download the driver for that. Once you have the <correct driver name here>.INF file in your linux file system remove all of the other ndiswrapper drivers (you do that by typing this command... ndiswrapper -e <name of driver given from "ndiswrapper -l" command>). So once all of the wrong drivers are removed then do "ndiswrapper -i <correct driver ...>.INF" and then "modprobe ndiswrapper" ... and then do ndiswrapper -l to see what it called your wireless hardware (probably "wlan0"). So once you have that hardware name do the "iwlist wlan0 scan" to see what WAPs (wireless access points) are available ... and then do "iwconfig wlan0 essid <name of WAP>" and you should be all set (except for changing some settings so your wireless is ready everytime you boot). If you have any other questions check out http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net for a lot of great info. Their Wiki page is great. Hope that helps =)