I have been using a MA401 (Netgear) wireless card with Mandrake 9.1 without much trouble (drakconf configured the card fine and the network worked after I entered the encryption in the advanced settings).

BUT I'm SOL with Mandrake 9.2 (RC2). I even tried the manual way of loading the modules and then:
- ifconfig eth1 up (I have a built-in eth0 wired card)
- iwconfig eth1 mode Managed (this is how I had it before)
- iwconfig eth1 enc 90xxxxxx09 (my encryption key copied from my access point -- which is also Netgear MR814?)
- route add default gw 192.168.0.1
- ifconfig eth1 192.168.0.15 up
- dhcpcd eth1 simply goes into never-never land.

I still can't ping my router/wap (192.168.0.1). Any pointers would be MUCH appreciated.
NOTE: I did update drakconf and drakxtools to the latest from cooker as of today.
NOTE: The same card works just fine under Knoppix 3.3. All I had to do was boot the live CD and then click on configure network for eth1. It automagically queried DHCP server and activated the network perfectly!!

what is the driver or chipset for the ma401?

Driver is orinoco

This is picked up just fine by MDK 9.2 (I used the drakconf tool and configured my network). The tool reported the network card fine.
I should perhaps elaborate a bit more...
- when I run drakconf, the tool picks up my card and installs the drivers (orinoco_cs)
- At the end of the configuration, my network connection is cylced and notice that my wifi card is assigned to eth1 (since eth0 is allocated to my built-in wired card)
- /sbin/ifconfig eth1 indicates that a valid dynamic IP is also assigned (192.168.0.50)
- /sbin/iwconfig shows my enctryption key (which I can set under the advanced user mode in above tool). Signal level is reported as -46dBm and noise level as -143 dBm.
I thinks these readings are sane.

HOWEVER, when I attempt a ping to my access point (192.168.0.1), I get the following errors:
PING 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 192.168.0.50 icms_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
ping: sendmsg: Operation not permitted
(this happens when I'm logged in as root as well)

My routing table looks like (the default line):
GW=192.168.0.1, Genmask=0.0.0.0, Flags=UG, Metric=0, Ref=0, Use=0, Iface=eth1

Does this shed any light?

Cheers,
Thas

perhaps this is the result of your security being set up a bit too tight, (firewall on the mandrake box?)

Waw! You hit the nail on its head!!
Here is the description of the solution for the benefit of everyone:
- following up on akaBeaVis' hint, I used drakSec to change my security level to 'poor' from 'standard'
- I also turned off firewalling by allowing 'Everything' in drakfirewall
- Then I restarted the network and everything worked fine (i.e. I could ping my Access Point just fine)
- Then out of curiousity, I put back my old settings by first setting security level back to 'Standard'. Ping continued to work!
- I also selected only 'ssh' in my firewall settings and ping continued to work!!
This is, in fact, the expected behaviour since 'standard' security level used to allow me to ping my AP in Mandrake 9.1
My guess is that that the above described toggling process probably set some security settings to the right value. I hope this is fixed in the final release. Any how, it is a minor hurdle and not a roadblock. I think I'll stick to the current snap-shot of cooker for now.

Thanks again for the hints/pointers.

Cheers,
Thas
PS: This message is being posted using my NA401 wifi card.

thanx for posting back the solution and being so thorough and detailed in your posts. If more people here posted the relevant info like you, there would be far shorter threads as a result, good job!

wow.
my faith has been restored in this site. i was beginning to think detailed, intelligent questions were a thing of the past.

Your lucky to even get your card recognized. I have to use the wireless through the usb port.

I get the cards working with Redhat 9.0 no problem as they have cardctl (sbin) and pcmcia (etc), but they appear to have been left out of mdk9.2rc2.

Let me know if you do have them, or what is your card being detected with?

I have tried lots of cards and zilch. (One card even has the Orinoco chip set)

I have everything else working now with mdk9.2rc2 and even have Thunderbird and Firebird working great (downloaded and put ikons on the desktop)

If I get this working I might not need to come back here and ask the questions anymore.