My turn to ask questions ;-)

I'm trying to fix up a notebook for my brother and his built in wireless went
titsup.  I found a couple of USB units in ye old junque box to use in place of
the on-board one and both work under Windows (after some searching for
drivers).  One is a Belkin F5D7050 which uses the Prism V1 driver, the other is
a US Robotics USR805422, chipset unknown.  I'm trying to set him up under Linux
as the Vista that came with his HP laptop flat out refuses to restore but I
really need to get wireless working.

Long and short of it is that openSUSE recognizes the Belkin piece but wants the
firmware file - which I can't find readily.  Ndiswrapper has me confused (I
know more than I understand!).  That looks like my best shot.

The USRobotics unit is even more of an enigma.  Linux recognizes that a device
is plugged in but doesn't get anything more than the device ID and string -
nothing else.  That one may be a lost cause.

Given that I have the WIn .sys drivers for both devices, how do I get them
going?  Since I can't find the exact firmware file for the Belkin Prism unit,
do I just install the win driver with ndiswrapper?  How?

Same questions for the USR piece.

  

Just an aside: eCS 2.0 RC4 actually recognizes and use BOTH of these devices
right out of the box.  How's that for an obsolete OS?