according to http://www.nongnu.org/orinoco/, the orinoco driver should be included in the kernel, so I have a few simple questions.
1) In a 2.6.10 kernel (on slackware 10.1), would the usb version of the driver (lsusb responds 0x0d4e/0x1000 to be exact (which according to the site should be in the cvs version)) be included?
2) If so, how would I execute the driver?
3) If not, is there anything special I have to worry about if compiling the cvs version on slackware?

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately USB support for Orinoco devices is not included in the kernel

Download the orinoco-usb driver from here:
http://folk.uio.no/oeysteio/orinoco-usb/
The page says devices identified as 0x0d4e/0x1000 are supported
The guy makes packages from CVS

The packages are in RPM format.
I did this:
rpm2tgz packagename.rpm
tar -zxvf packagename.tgz

After compiling and installing, the module you want is orinoco_usb
I think you need to load the "hermes" and "orinoco" modules beforehand, but I'm not sure.

All went well for me, but no devices were detected.
Later discovered my "ORiNOCO" branded proxim USB adapter used a PRISM2 chipset! (well, I got it working with the PRISM2 linux-wlan.com drivers after adding the vendor and product IDs to one of the source code files......)

Good luck,
Forrest

thanx, ill try that and hope it works.

well, i tried using the method u mentioned above, and got an improper module format error while trying to load the modules, so then i downloaded the cvs source myself and compiled that (and it was much easier that the script as well) but still got an improper module format error, even when i appended -DMODVERSIONS -include $(KERNEL_SRC)/include/linux/modversions.h to CPPFLAGS in the makefile.
so i ran infomod on one of the modules, and it said it was for the 2.6.8-24 kernel, so im sorta lost right now on what to try next.

ok, i downloaded the most recent version of the driver from the cvs, everything compiled fine, i had no trouble inserting the modules, but still, nothing happens. I'd be satisified with just the power light turning on on my wireless card (which is all it should do as i havent configured it yet) but i get nothing. ive but the firmware in hotplug and tired restarting my system, replugging in the card, but nothing seems to work... help please?