OMG, I can't believe I'm writing this on my Debian side of the computer ... :) Finally! Following the very useful HowTo provided above by Florian I've updated the pci.ids file, following Tom's advice I've updated the kernel to 2.6.18-3-amd64, recompiled the rt61 module, and what do you know, I'm connected to the world again. Thanks everybody, cheers, Avishai.