problem with apple airport card in managed mode

[Wojciech Owczarek <owczi@owczi.net>]

Hello list,

I've posted about my issues before, but got no replies, so I'm trying
again. I run  linux on my powerbook g3/firewire (Pismo), and I simply
can't get my airport (classic) card to work in managed mode. 
It keeps losing the AP. When I watch iwconfig, I see it associate with
the ap, and after a while AP is seen as 44:44:44:44:44 - the default
when no AP.
	Also, setting essid to 'any' makes it see the AP, but just for a
second or so, and it doesn't change the essid to an available one,
essid remains unset. I can see it associate only when I explicitly set
the essid from the list that iwlist scan shows me. Even then, and during
the rare moment when the card is associated, no application that
monitors wlan signal shows that fact (I mean panel applets in various
WMs, and such - nothing is shown). I have currently no possibility to
check it under mac os. This is not related with wep encryption.
	Reported firmware version is lucent/agere 8.70. I wonder if
this is a matter of channelset for some other country - but from what I
see on a white sticker on the card, it came from Holland. I live in
Europe also, Poland. 
	The funniest thing is that the card works perfectly in ad-hoc
mode. I know orinoco doesn't support the short preamble mode, but when
I disable it on the AP - set it to long or auto - my airport still
doesn't work.
	Do you think that trying to run it under OSX would help?
Is my firmware the latest version? Maybe it's a matter of some settings,
kernel parameters etc? Could it be a problem with my powerbook's
firmware? When I first got it it had mac os 9 installed.
	Or maybe my card is simply broken? I guess it's not since the
card gets detected every time and works in ad-hoc mode.

please help, my card card the way it acts now is pretty much unusable
for me outside my home. And classic airport cards get expensive these
days.

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