I have just noticed something else, which is obviously important but does not make sense. When I type "ndiswrapper -l," before listing "WUSB54G; driver present, hardware present," it says "Linksys invalid driver!", which I have never seen before. Could this latest Ndiswrapper have been so updated as to make my driver invalid? Even stranger, it still says "Linksys invalid driver!" after I remove the driver by typing ndiswrapper -e wusb54g.

did you save the driver to your harddrive or did you just point ndiswrapper to the cd? maybe it is looking for driver on the cd.
just a though.

According to the ndiswrapper list The are three versions of the wusb54g. It list a version 1, 2 and 4.
One version uses a prism54 chipset and version four uses RT2500usb chipset. You might google around and see what other people are doing to install it. Also, it lists at least 3 other sources for the rt2500usb drivers.
And since you are getting an invalid driver you might check into this.

One of the chipset has not worked with kernel 2.4 and you need at least 2.6.7 or better to get it to work.

What Kernel version does 10.1 have ? I don't remember off hand. An upgrade to 10.2 might be necessary.

Well, I already know that version #1 (WUSB54G) of the driver is the correct version, because that is the only one for which my Ndiswrapper says "driver present, hardware present." The instructions state that Ndiswrapper must say both of those things, or the driver is not correct. (By the way, don't ask why there are versions 1, 2 and 4 but not 3.)

Did you make sure you're using the driver from the ndiswrapper known devices list (here: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...index.php/List)? If you're using the driver that came on the setup CD for your device, it might be different from the one on the list, and thus untested, or not currently working (for example, the driver for my built-in wireless on my laptop from their website was an older version than the one it came with, and the newer version doesn't work). Just because ndiswrapper lists the driver you have loaded as "driver present, hardware present", doesn't necessarily mean it's the correct driver (trust me on this one, I'm speaking from experience ). Make sure what version of that device you have, and try the driver listed at the page above. And if you're still getting "invalid driver" messages after uninstalling the driver, try uninstalling ndiswrapper and trying again. Also, if you can't get this version of ndiswrapper working, try something older, 1.0 for example. When I went through all this, I think the newest version was 1.2, and I never did get it working. I tried 1.0, and it worked. Did I mention that the .rpm version of ndiswrapper packaged with 10.2 works perfectly right out of the box?

Then I guess I'll have to try, as you suggest, either an older Ndiswrapper or Mandrake 10.2, because Sourceforge's link to the WUSB54G download at Linksys is a dead link; it doesn't work.

Hang on...where can I get Mandrake 10.2?? The latest version at linuxiso.org is 10.2, and www.linux-mandrake-com and www.mandrakelinux.com don't provide anything useful. I haven't actually looked for the Mandrake website since the last time I downloaded Mandrake, a few months ago.

Well, technically, it's Mandriva now, and the official name for Mandrake 10.2 is Mandriva 2005 LE. Just google around and you should be able to find mirrors. That's what I did.

Did you also notice that on the known devices list, it mentioned that your device uses a prism 54 chipset that has a native linux driver, but may or may not have USB support (it is "working on" USB support, at last update of the list)? The site is http://prism54.org/ , maybe you can use a native driver and not have to fool around with ndiswrapper and Windows drivers.

Thank you, Thunderweasel and all other individuals who helped me on this thread. I now have my wireless equipment working in Mandrake, and am online. I thought that while I was fooling around, before this thread generated any useful information, I may have removed something important or tweaked some setting inappropriately; so I reinstalled Mandrake and followed your instructions without doing anything beforehand.
What made the difference here was that Thunderweasel told me how to install the kernel sources, which I didn't understand before (no idea I could get them from the control panel; I thought I had to download and manually install them. That's why I was always trying to install from RPMs before; without kernel sources; RPMs are all I could use, no?
Anyway, everything works now; thank you very much.

Cool, glad to hear you got it fixed!