• A HP zd7000 Notebook
• Gentoo Linux with a kernel 2.6.8
• A Netgear PCMCIA Wireless PC Card (802.11a/b/g) WAG511

• Getting pcmcia working was easy, just compile the yenta socket
• Wireless is sometimes a pain, even when using windoes or max
• Netgear and Linux brings most people to wish you good luck (same goes for broadcom as far as I found out)! When do all of you hardware companies finally find out that Linux is on it's way and create drivers!
• Since I knew there was no Linux driver for this card, I had to use the windows driver using mad-wifi!
• There is a HUGE difference between the WG511 and the WAG511 (there are nor linux drivers for the WAG511 *sigh*)

forums.gentoo.org where else :P (ok a little google too)

# get root
 su -
# update portage :)
emerge sync
# emerge the wireless tools to manage the wireless card
# for those interested I currently got wireless-tools-27_pre23
emerge wireless-tools
# now lets get the madwifi-driver :)
# my version: net-wireless/madwifi-driver-0.1_pre20040906
# in case you only have a real old version you might want to use
# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge madwifi-driver
emerge madwifi-driver
# plugged in the card
modprobe ath_pci
# create an init script
cp /etc/init.d/net.eth0 /etc/init.d/net.ath0That was basically it... with iwconfig I found out it's working.. I will post my results in actual "live tests" soon
some links:
The madwifi-faq
Gentoo Linux Installation on a Sony Vaio (with madwifi)