Running Slackware 9.1 with kernel 2.6.7
Gateway Solo 5150 laptop
D-Link DWL-G650 wireless NIC
Installed madwifi 20040720.wpa driver

I can get the card to come up fine, get's IP, pings anything on the network. Then it quits. Ifconfig shows the card there and configured with an address, but ping doesn't work. Checked syslog and see these entries in it:

ath0: hardware error; reseting
ath0: ath_reset: unable to reset hardware; hal status 3

Now I can reinitialize the card manually and it comes back up, but this is a pain in the a**.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what is going on?

I have had the same problems with a WinXP machine using a wireless USB NIC. The signal goes dead because the wireless access point (WAP) is too far away (SECOND FLOOR). Once I moved right underneath the WAP, the signal was better. It was still low, but the connection didn't die. Try moving closer to the WAP and see if the connections last longer.