I am running suse 9.1 and I am try to use a Linksys WPC11 Ver3 wireless PC card. When I insert the cart it is detected just fine with both lights coming on. ifconfig shows the output below indicating that the card is loaded but not as a wireless card though.

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:3 Base address:0x100

Below is the output of iwconfig.

wlan0 no wireless extensions

I am not sure where to go from here. should I use ndiswrapper. Is the module (listed in yast as orinoco_cs) for the card wrong. I am also trying to use a program called netgo which executes the iwconfig commands to configure the card for multiple profiles. Below is the output I get when the iwconfig cammands are executed. Any help will be appreciated.

* Setting wireless mode: Managed
- Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
- SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not supported.
* Setting essid: binginet
- Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :
- SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not supported.
* Setting key (hex): 137C33692A
- Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
- SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not supported.

The orinoco_cs driver should work. It supports the Prism chipset - your card is a Prism 3 model. I'm using the same card with that module. ndiswrapper would not be a good plan, I think, because the Windows driver for that card is crap.

That said, I don't know for sure why it's not working. Try bringing up the interface before setting the wireless parameters. i.e., ifconfig wlan0 up Then, iwconfig wlan0 essid, mode, etc.