After taking to heart the two messages received in response to my plea
for help (thanks pinniped and Kevin Mark) I spent several hours on the
net and found some useful information. Nevertheless, I still do not
have a wireless connection.
First, I agree with both pinniped and Kevin Mark that gui configurators
for wireless cards are not helpful. After some experimentation I found
that something in either KWiFiManager or the wireless network utility in
the KDE Control Centre added the two lines in the
/etc/network/interfaces file "address 127.0.0.1" and "netmask 255.0.0.0"
were preventing me from booting with the wired card already installed,
because doing so would hang the computer when I tried to log on to my
user. Once I commented out those two lines I had no trouble.
Second, of the two wireless cards I tried, I found that one, the
SMC2835W, comes in three versions. Version 1 works if the prism54
module is installed. However, versions 2 and 3 do not. The only way to
determine the version of such cards is to run "cardctl ident".
There is absolutely nothing in the packaging or the manual on the
accompanying CDROM to identify the version. It so happens that I have
version 3; so I am out of luck as far as that card is concerned. Anyone
want to buy it? It would be nice if manufacturers came clean about
their products.
Third, I still had the second card I tried, a surecom EP-9428-g\3A. I
discovered that the driver for this card is the rt2500. (Is that also
the chipset name?) As pinniped said, the rt2500 driver became open
source about a year ago.