WiFi troubles: Netgear WG311T

[Samuel Thurston, III]

Howdy list!

I'm having headaches with my wireless setup.  I tried a D-Link card
that wasn't on the compatibility list and had no luck, even though it
claims to be supported by ndiswrapper.  Since nobody could offer me
any help to get it working, I decided to give that card away to a
friend and buy one listed on ubuntu's compatibility list wiki
[http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/HardwareSupportComponentsWirelessNetworkCards].

It was a priority that the card be easy to set up, as I wasted
something on the order of 30 hours trying to set up the previous card
with no results, so I chose the Netgear WG311T, as it is marked as
working "out of the box" and is pretty affordable.

lspci says:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82810 GMCH [Graphics Memory
Controller Hub] (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82810 CGC [Chipset
Graphics Controller] (rev 03)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801AA PCI Bridge (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801AA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801AA IDE (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801AA USB (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801AA SMBus (rev 02)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801AA AC'97
Audio (rev 02)
0000:01:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212
802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
0000:01:0d.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905 100BaseTX [Boomerang]
0000:01:0e.0 Communication controller: Conexant HSF 56k Data/Fax Modem (rev 01)

The atheros is our target here.  it's pciid is:  168c:0013 (rev 01)

I saw this (amongst other stuff) in lsmod:
ath_pci                60608  0
ath_rate_onoe           8904  1 ath_pci
wlan                  118524  2 ath_pci,ath_rate_onoe
ath_hal               133232  1 ath_pci

ok, everything looks hunky-dory so far. problem: ath0 or wlan0 does
not show up in System>administration>networking or in /dev/.

then i did a dmesg | grep ath and found what is likely the problem: 
ath_hal: 0.9.12.14 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212)
ath_rate_onoe: 1.0
ath_pci: 0.9.4.12 (EXPERIMENTAL)
ath%d: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 13

ok... not good. consulting matt foster's madwifi FAQ, on the topic
"what does HAL status 13" mean i get this:

http://www.mattfoster.clara.co.uk/madwifi-8.htm#5

"unsupported"... GREAT!  

as a last ditch effort, I tried using the drivers provided on the
CDROM with NDISWRAPPER and while it says "driver present, hardware
present" it still doesn't show up in /dev/ or
System>Administration>Networking...

can anyone offer some advice here?  would it be worthwhile to download
the newest madwifi source and recompile the modules?  will it cause
problems since the module already exists in my kernel binaries?  or
should i return this card and try some other model listed on the
compatible list?  do i have any reason to believe that *this time* it
will actually be compatible?  finally, is it possible that my
ndiswrapper modules are interfering with the atheros drivers or vice
versa? if so, how should i go about testing this theory?

Thanks,
Sam