I have a laptop with a Lucent Orinoco Gold card, how would one connect to the access point I have set up at home.

Ah, those pesky, little details.
Which ORiNOCO? Post the model to make sure we on the same page.
PCI, PCMCIA?
Which distro?
What AP are you using? Any encryption? 802.1x?

Assuming Slack from your sig and an original Gold PCMCIA from your wording, it should be pretty straight-forward.

1. Make sure that Wireless Tools is loaded.
2. Insert the card and listen for two high-pitched beeps.
3. Use wireless tools (iwconfig) to set the mode, rate, SSID and encryption to match the AP.
4. Use normal network tools (ifconfig) to configure the interface - IP, DNS, gateway.
5. Edit /ect/pcmcia/wireless.opts to reflect the wireless settings that you want to save and have applied on boot.

The card is a orinoco gold and actually I am using a live Distro, Knoppix-STD.

OK, you're in good shape with the card. I've not used Knoppix-STD, but the orinoco_cs drivers should be part of the kernel and should load on boot. From there, use iwconfig to set up the wireless parameters.

Does Kismet run properly? It uses the same driver.

Put local area security in and start hacking people at the pizza parlor.

so how do you dictate the ip address, gateway and dns using ifconfig?

Wayne

From man ifconfig:
ifconfig interface [aftype] options | address ...

ex. - ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.100 or ifconfig eth0 up

Thanks for the reply but I also need the subnet mask and the gateway address. How do I assign these?

Wayne

Use the command "route."

Some examples: http://www.siliconvalleyccie.com/lin...work-linux.htm