I had a big trouble with an atheros card on my vaio. It simply wasn`t connecting to the wireless with wep protected.
I found the solution on the site Software.openSUSE.org.
Than I searched for “wireless”(without quotes).
I installed wireless tools and the compat-wireless-kmp-pae (this pae is for my kernel version, before install check your kernel version, normally default).
Than all you have to do is to reboot and configure your wireless in knetwork manager.
Maybe it works with another wireless cards.
Hope it be useful!