I recently bought the Alfa AWUS036h which uses the Realtek rtl8187 chipset. I am able to load the module and connect to any network, but its almost as soon as I try to load a page the connection drops. It never stays connected for more than 30 seconds. My other computers using the same adapter in the same spot work fine, unfortunately there not running slackware. I've tried compiling the newest stable kernel and checked the rd.inet1.conf settings.

Has anyone else had this same issue? Please help, im at an all stop and don't want to resort to any other distribution.

I have similar problems but under slack 12.2. What is strange when I was running 13.1 everything was OK except that when I used wicd it caused dhcpcd to become zombie - in fact there were two dhcpcd processes and one of them zombied. Now I'm running 12.2 and at first: I don't use wicd - probably I am unable to configure it properly, so that is how I start manually my wifi connection (as a root)

If there is a problem at first I test wpa_supplicant (as a root)
Sometimes wpa_cli says that it's OK - so I try iwconfig to see if I am associated. If not I kill dhcpcd and terminate wpa_supplicant and rerun all above again. When I am associated and ifconfig shows the wlan0 interface is up and I have an IP I ping a router. If the router answers and I am able to connect to it as a router admin I suspect that it is the router which fails to establish a conection to internet. I also noticed that a signal is unstable - it jumps up and down. Of course the solution is temporarily but enough to approximately find out what's going on. Better I should configure rc.inet1.
Hope this help.

After you mentioned your running 12.2, I decided to downgrade to 12.0 but in the process of compiling the 2.6.29.4 kernel. The strange thing is the wireless adapter works great under backtrack 4, but under Slack it doesn't seem to stay connected. I too do not use wicd, I see the AP in iwconfig then run dhcpcd and it assigns me a IP, and less than 45 seconds later is no longer transmitting but ifconfig still says im connected. Any thoughts? I really wonder what is different between bt4 and slackware that would make much of a difference. This is really starting to wear me out, I need my slackware and wireless internet. If you've got any ideas, let me know! Thanks man.

Did you try to ping some remote place? I don't remember what is the IP number for google - I know only that it responds. I am bit aware if the 2.6.29 kernel will work on slack 12.x. Maybe try to test default kernel. But really I don't know how it is - usually I stay with default kernels - simply I don't like to compile kernels - it is complicated (and I follow advices of *BSD community - do not compile kernel).

So I just finished putting slack 12.0 on my box and compiled the 2.6.29.4 kernel and the adapter is working superbly! The connectivity issue for the alfa card is most certainly exclusive to 13.1. What causes it though, I don't know. I would love to troubleshoot more, if anyone is interested, in the mean time, im happy with some throwback slack.

Thank's. Now I know I may upgrade my kernel.

Are you using a config file for kernel configuration from the distribution or your own?

Sorry for the late response. I usually go through and revamp the config from scratch. Each computer is different, and requires different modules, I try to keep a bare-minimum. Also, if you want you can compile a new kernel and boot into it first, make sure it works then do the complete change. Don't forget to run mkinitrd after you compile the kernel too.
Best Regards, Robert.