Ralink T2501USB not detected

[InNewtonITrust]

Your'e right. When i plugged in the stick while running Windows, a storage device popped up in my external media list (in 'My Computer'). It had an 'autorun.exe' in it, which led to a "Do you Wish to install?" sequence, and when the driver finished instaliing, the device disappeared from the storage media list.

I'll look around for what can be done in 11.1. But be prepared to see more of me!

[InNewtonITrust]

Right. Went through the page you suggested.
The program these guys offer to download is brand new, with a very small (though growing) number of users. Activating it is quite an intricate game, but i've managed (they've taken pains to give you lotsa info). But then, the terminal gives me an error. Ouch. Posted the details on their forum (hail, forums! I love Open Source!).
So, that's where i'm at now. Will keep you up to posted (oh nice. A pun!).

[InNewtonITrust]

Right.

I had a nice experience with the usb_modeswitch guys. Figured out a number of ways to switch the device id- apart from using the software. The simplest one was to simply 'eject' the device. It disappears from "plugged in devices", and lsusb yeilds '148f:9021 Ralink Technologies'. Just what i wanted.

Then, just configuration. Authentication simple, pings showed all ok, but konqueror couldn't find requested server. So, i turned once again to the sticky, turned off IPv6, and i was online!

Thanks are in order! Or maybe, were in order...

After spending a happy 2 weeks online (sorry i didn't update you guys during this time), along came 11.2, and i installed it (not 'Upgrade', but 'Fresh Installation'. I have no idea why).

Positives- It had the driver & firmware for my device pre-installed, unlike 11.1.
Negatives- Well. Everything seems fine. At least, according to the sticky. Yet, i can't connect. I've posted terminal results as proof:

uname -r:

2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop

iwconfig:

                                                        
lo        no wireless extensions.                                               

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"In The Buddha We Trust"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:24:93:04:49:F0   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm                                   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off                 
          Encryption key:{you know} [2]                                                    
          Power Management:on                                                   
          Link Quality=42/70  Signal level=-68 dBm                              
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0              
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

/sbin/ifconfig:

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:D0:41:B5:96:C3  
          inet addr:192.168.1.35  Bcast:255.255.255.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::2d0:41ff:feb5:96c3/64 Scope:Link               
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1               
          RX packets:1108 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0            
          TX packets:637 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0           
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000                                     
          RX bytes:116223 (113.4 Kb)  TX bytes:82739 (80.7 Kb)

ping -c 5 192.168.1.1:

PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=2.54 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=2.00 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=2.58 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=2.47 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=2.14 ms

--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.002/2.350/2.580/0.234 ms

ping -c 5 66.70.73.150

PING 66.70.73.150 (66.70.73.150) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- 66.70.73.150 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 3999ms
Okay, what's this?

ping -c 5 www.samba.org

PING fn.samba.org (216.83.154.106) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from fn.samba.org (216.83.154.106): icmp_seq=1 ttl=39 time=202 ms
64 bytes from fn.samba.org (216.83.154.106): icmp_seq=2 ttl=39 time=202 ms
64 bytes from fn.samba.org (216.83.154.106): icmp_seq=3 ttl=39 time=212 ms
64 bytes from fn.samba.org (216.83.154.106): icmp_seq=4 ttl=39 time=202 ms
64 bytes from fn.samba.org (216.83.154.106): icmp_seq=5 ttl=36 time=203 ms

--- fn.samba.org ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 202.313/204.767/212.475/3.905 ms

/usr/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 | grep Mb:

Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm

Also tried " /usr/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 rate 24M", and then " /usr/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M". No luck.

So, where to now?