Ok, so using ndiswrapper, an odd little bit that runs a windows driver for this crazy network card, I can get this slackware laptop online in the following steps.

This is all down on slackware 10.1 with dropline gnome 2.10 running kernel 2.6.11-ck3 (from linux militia.net) and ndiswrapper 1.2rc1 on this netgear ma521 PCMCIA card. I'm on the laptop right now...

1. modprobe ndiswrapper
(I hacked in an entry into modules.rc, as well as one of those alias things for modprobe.conf, ndiswrapper -m updated modprobe.conf by itself however)

2. run iwconfig wlan0 essid "AT@Love" (the mode and channel options at their defaults seem to work) I later edited rc.wireless.conf and was able to use "sh rc.wireless wlan0" instead of iwconfig, even though it is still passing the damn comannds TO iwconfig.

(after running the above command the Lnk light comes on the card.

3. /sbin/dhcpcd wlan0 (grabs a quick ip)

4. and then thats it. Im online. I added the iwconfig/rc.wireless command and the dhcp command to rc.local, but the problem is I feel that this is really inefficient, and wrong use of slackware scripts.

What I would like would be some of the better slackware folks here to help me make the card work much better. I would like it to run the various commands whenever it is inserted, for instance. Right now the card has to be in on bootup, or I have to (su) and run rc.local, or just the commands themselves. Other than that I quess I should be content, (I should be content now, im technically using a WINDOWS driver, but slackware users have a hint of OCD), it would be nice to have rc.inet et al to think of the card more as a standard ethernet device. I imagine hotplug will have to be looked into

So whats the best, most elegant solution to working a wireless card in slackware?
Hopefully I dont sound like a rambling idiot and someone will help me.

But as always Thanks to all here at linuxquestions.org

Thanks.

What's the card? It's entirely possible that you don't need to use the Windows driver. I know people who swear by ndiswrapper. Personally, I swear at it.

That said, if it works, it's good enough. There's not really any "right" way to do it. You've already set up rc.wireless. It works out of the box for any kernel-supported wlan card, because they get detected as eth?. If you don't have a kernel-supported card, then you get something else. It may follow the BSD standard wi?, it may be wlan?, or some oddball thing like ath? for atheros cards using madwifi.

You could always hack rc.inet1 as well, and tell it to bring up wlan0 as well. Or do something else. On my laptop, I created a "wlan" script, and put it in /sbin (it uses su-only commands, so makes sense to put it in su-only directory). Link the script in rc.local, but I can also use it any time during runtime. It displays a menu, asking which wlan I want to configure for (home, school, public-but-they-don't-know-it hotspot downtown, library), and then kills dhcp, sets the card, and acquires dhcp.

Yea, you should be able to add wlan0 to rc.inet1.conf... I use Linuxant's Driverloader and it assigns my card as eth*... So rc.inet1 picks it up right away. If you run as a user and not root, I don't see why you couldn't:

ln -sf /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 /usr/bin/network

Then just:

network start

or just make a launcher that executes '/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 start' if your really feeling lazy...

Or you could make a script yourself with all the manual commands required to activate your card and then drop that in you PATH or make a launcher pointing to it. You can pretty much do it any way you can imagine...

Yeah I should be able to fiqure something out. It would be better if it was a kernel supported card.
Its one of those reltek8180's so ndiswrapper looks to be my only solution. And it gets assigned wlan0.
Ill look into inet1 stuff and If i need any other help Ill hollar./

My card is rtl8180 based too, but I never could get ndiswrapper to work. I broke down and paid for Linuxant driverloader which works flawlessly.

After my slack install, I configured networking to use DHCP with all the default parameters. the dhcpcd program runs on boot now.

After installing the driverloader program and configuring, all I do is pop in my wireless card and it automatically configures and does the dhcp bid. I can also plug in my 10/100 nic card and it will use the same dhcp settings. They both use eth0 for the interface, but I can change them easily.

Yea, driverloader is nice... I have a Belkin card and I'm using the realtek 8180 drivers with it.... I'm pretty happy with Linuxant. I've bought HSF modem drivers for my onboard tornado and the wireless drivers. Money well spent in my book.

tornado? Thats my ethernet card... You get the idea...

I couldn't agree more! It has always worked with no configuration hassles. Now if I could get a sound driver for my laptop I'd be all happy..