Connecting to a wireless network really consists of two parts. The first one is configuring the card and the second one is requesting (or assigning) and IP address and other required network configurations. Lets handle the configuration first:

When configuring a card, you need to do at least one, and possibly more, things. The first is set the SSID of the station you want to use (in this case FMWireless) using a command like this:

iwconfig eth1 essid FMWireless

If that is successful, you should see FMWireless appear in the iwconfig output. The second (and sometimes optional) bit is to enable encryption.


is correct, provided the xxx bit is the hex version of the key. The fact that you can connect to this AP with Windows suggests that either the AP isn't WEP secured, or that Windows has had the WEP key entered previously. The fact that the scan is reporting that WEP is enabled suggests that a key is required.
This is the second part of using a wireless card, getting an IP address. Assuming that the access point is running a DHCP server, you need to run a DHCP client. Some of the common ones in Linux are dhcpcd, dhclient and pump. Now normally, pump is called using the ifup command, so rather than running pump directly, you can run it like this (as root):

ifup eth1

which (if your card is configured and you're lucky) will get an IP address, set the gateway and add a DNS to /etc/resolv.conf. All DHCP clients will do this, not just pump. You can also avoid using DHCP and set these parameters up manually using ifconfig, route, and a text editor, but that usually requires some knowledge of the network you're trying to connect to like the IP range they allow, the IP address of the router and the IP addresses of their ISP. On a home network, you're likely to know these things but if you are out using someone elses, that isn't likely.

And yes, ssid and essid refer to the same thing, the name of the access point.

Hangdog:
The steps you outlined are pretty much what I'd surmised from various help sources. I don't see anything I haven't heard of and your post did clarify a few details. Here's where I am today:

I found a hotspot open to windows, booted linux, set up the drivers and opened kwifi manager. I found the network in question with scan, with wep set to on. (I think my system is responsible for the 'on' setting since windows says it's an open network) I set it to off and got the "switch to network" button. As before, clicking it did no good. i opened the 'configuration editor' and set the network name, changed 'iface autodetected' to eth1, and turned off 'use encryption' and finally,clicked on 'activate'. The signal strength jumped from 0 to 100% and the good stuff showed up under AccessPoint and frequency(channel). I looked under connection statistics and it appeared that signal to noise graph was giving real and reasonabe data for a connection.

I opened a terminal window and started playing with different comands to iwconfig and pump. I noticed that commands to iwconfig in the terminal were reflected almost immediately by changes in kwifi manager, so I had some feedback if I worsened the connection status.

No matter what I tried in iwconfig, pump -i eth0 returned 'operation failed' after a several second pause.

ifup eth1 failed immediately.

I'm sure the access point is open, windows grabs it fine, i'm pretty sure my card was talking to their system because I got access point and signal...so where do I look to find out why pump and ifup failed?

I would have a look in your system logs (/var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages) as well as dmesg to see if ifup or pump are leaving clues.

By the way, you are root when you run ifup or pump, aren't you? As an alternative to pump, try dhclient or dhcpcd if one of them is installed on your system.

I would also (at least for now) avoid using kwifi manager. It may be hiding important errors. You can use iwconfig and iwlist in the console to do most of what you need to do.

Huh! I had been running pump with the sudo command, not actually logged in as root. Maybe that was the problem, or maybe in trying different commands to iwconfig I lost something I needed, but in any event, I am currently connected via the local library's wireless hotspot. WOOHOO! Thanks for all your patient help hangdog!

Congrats! In theory sudo should be the same as being root, but I suppose it is possible that sudo doesn't pick up on all of roots environement variables and something goes haywire. I know I run dhcpcd with sudo all the time and it works, but pump may behave differently.