wlan controller bcm4318 won't find networks

[Johannes Bauer]

Hi,
I'm on a Compaq nx6125 *sigh* and I'm trying to connect to my home wlan
using the built-in wlan controller Broadcom bcm4318. After a bit of a
struggle I got everything configured so "ifconfig eth2 up" doesn't
complain and I can set all relevant parameters using iwconfig - the
little blue light that indicates wifi activity even goes on when the
network interface is configured. But I can't get a connection.
kwifimanager tells me I was "Out of range" and wifi-radar just doesn't
find any networks even if I'm sitting right next to the AP.
dmesg tells me
[17180464.400000] ieee80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'WEP'
[17180465.444000] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth2: link is not ready
[17180466.600000] NET: Registered protocol family 17
and another "ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth2: link is not ready" for every
time i do ifdown eth2; ifup eth2.
I'm using the native drivers tg3 and bcm43xx instead of ndiswrapper. My
interfaces file looks like this:

 # The loopback network interface
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback

 mapping hotplug
        script grep
        map eth0

 # The primary network interface
 iface eth0 inet static
         address 192.168.99.23
         netmask 255.255.255.0
         network 192.168.99.0
         broadcast 192.168.99.255
         gateway 192.168.99.2
         # dns-* options are implemented by the resolvconf package, if
installed
         dns-nameservers 192.168.99.2
 auto eth0

 iface eth1 inet dhcp
 pre-up iwconfig eth1 rate 11M
 wireless-essid AGRICOLAE
 wireless-key [HEX_VALUE]
 auto eth1
 
 iface eth2 inet dhcp
 pre-up iwconfig eth2 rate 11M
 wireless-essid AGRICOLAE
 wireless-key [HEX_VALUE]
 auto eth2

As you see, I configured both eth1 and eth2 because the assignment of
the device seems to randomly change between both.
The kernel is 2.6.15-25-k7
"ifup eth2" brings up the interface correctly, but dhclient fails
unsurprisingly because there is no wlan connection. One thing that
bothers me though is that it scans for networks before the blue LED
lights. So probably even if everything worked alright I'd have to call
dhclient manually since it tries to connect to soon.
Does anyone know why I would get the error message in dmesg? Any other
suggestions?
Thanks,
Johannes