I have a Linksys WUSB11 wireless card, which is Atmel-based. I finally got it to work with the latest atmelwlandriver, so ifconfig recognizes it as eth0 and iwconfig sees my network, channel, SSID, etc.
The network has WEP-128 encryption, and I have the 26-digit hex key. I know that it is the correct key as it works when I reboot into Win2000. However, I can't get it to work in Debian.

I have tried
iwconfig eth0 key xxxxxxxxxxxx
and then do networking restart, which says something like 'network is down'. After issuing iwconfig key, iwconfig by itself says
mode: restricted mode: open Key: 0000-0000-0000-00 or something like that.
Airsnort doesn't work with the driver I have as it refuses to go into promiscuous mode.
Any suggestions as to how I can get the WEP key to work?

Thank you

This is a sheer guess, but try separating the digits in the key with colons in groups of 2:

0a:1f:78:2e:ed:51 etc., etc.

embarrassing.. of course, iwconfig eth0 xxxx-xxxx-foo-xx [1] worked just fine...