the infamous linux wifi monster strikes

[Robert Holtzman]

Sorry for the length of this but I figured too much is better than too 
little.

This my my first foray into networking. After much searching in forums,
archives, google and more I'm down to posting this.

Running Hardy on an Athlon 5200+ on a desktop. Also a Dell Latitude
(used) laptop with Hardy, a Broadcom BCM5705 ethernet controller and an 
IntelPRO/Wireless 2200BG network controller (so says lspci). The desktop
is hard wired to a Linksys WRT54GL router. I'm using *spit* Cox
broadband. When I first got the laptop it would detect a number of 
networks. After I configured the router it detected, in addition, the 
access point. Now it detects nothing. At first I could ping the router
from both computers.Now the laptop shows "Destination Host Unreachable".
Also, at first, /etc/resolv.conf showed 192.168.1.1, the router. Now it
shows the Cox nameservers."lshw -C network" shows eth1 with the correct 
information including the ipw2200 module and driver. It also says 
"wireless=unassociated". Sounds ominous."iwconfig" gives

eth1      unassociated  ESSID:off/any
           Mode:Managed  Channel=0  Access Point: Not-Associated
           Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   Sensitivity=8/0
           Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
           Power Management:off
           Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

"ifconfig" gives

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:00:4a:a3:4c
           UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
           RX packets:1374 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
           TX packets:96 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
           RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
           Interrupt:5 Base address:0xa000 Memory:fafef000-fafeffff

eth1:avahi Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:00:4a:a3:4c
           inet addr:169.254.4.252  Bcast:169.254.255.255
Mask:255.255.0.0
           UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
           Interrupt:5 Base address:0xa000 Memory:fafef000-fafeffff

/etc/network/interfaces shows:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

iface eth1 inet dhcp
wpa-psk d2719392f568b4954ceb9f64da69382e157a996aa81a86833c5955470bc2f6ab
wpa-driver wext
wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
wpa-proto WPA
wpa-ssid linksys_OW_32486

There was a box in the Network Manager drop down to enable wireless. Now 
it's gone.

Being a network noob I'm clueless as to how to proceed. Any help would 
be appreciated.

-- 
Bob Holtzman
"If you think you're getting free lunch,
  check the price of the beer"