trouble with networking on T40

[Chris Frey <cdfrey@foursquare.net>]

Hi,

I'm having a rough time trying to get the non-free firmware to load
automatically in the debian wheezy rc1 installer, when installing on a
ThinkPad T40.

According to the documentation I've read, all I should need to do is
download the firmware.tar.gz file and put it on a USB key.  I've used
unetbootin to make the same USB key bootable into the wheezy install
CD (CD 1, not netinst).

But it gets stuck in a loop, continually asking if I want to load the
firmware.

Two questions:

1) Am I doing this correctly?  Do I need to put this file in a special
	directory?  Is it not possible to put the firmware on the same
	USB key that I'm booting from?

2) Where in the debian-installer source code would I look for the code that
	expands the firmware.tar.gz file?  I've downloaded the svn/git
	tree, but it's pretty large.  I've only found a few references
	to firmware.tar in the code so far.

Thanks!
- Chris