Wireless card for emachine?

["Thomas H. George" <lists@tomgeorge.info>]

I have been given an emachine M5310 laptop with a dead battery and am 
considering trying to convert it to a debian etch laptop.  I can boot it 
with a GRML cd and lsdev reports wifi0 when an Activa wifi card is 
plugged in.  I tried using wlanconfig but have not been able to specify 
a static IP address to access my home network.  The machine is known to 
contain its own wifi and searches for dynamic addresses when I boot it 
with a DebianLive Gnome cd. but Debain/apps/system/network demands a 
root password and wont accept sudo bash so I can't set an assigned 
static IP address.

Is the emachine worth the effort?  A new battery will set me back $95.  
Would I also need to purchase another Linux compatible wifi card?

Tom George