Newbie Wifi Basic Questions Options

[zthird]

I have had this wifi card working a few years ago on Sharp/Cacko but I had to replace a wireless access point and although two other windows machine can connect wirelessly no problem the SL C860 can not.
As cacko gave me no info and a lack of standard wireless tools so I installed pdaXrom but it is giving me the same issue.

Card is an Origo - with ident "SENAO NL-2011CD PLUS" man id: 0x000b 0x7100

Insert card light comes on and flashes any settings in the lan config simply turn off the light for a few seconds and it then starts blinking again.

I tried run iwconfig manually but nothing seems to change.

dmesg always reports (repeatedly) LinkStatus=6 (Association failed)
with a BSSID=44:44:44:44:44

but the wierd thing is if I set the ESSID to "any" in the GUI I get some random ESSID show up in iwconfig and the light goes solid.
(no ip or anything)

I guess this shows the card and the Z are working but, I had dissabled all the wifi security (no WEP, no MAC filtering) I even set the mode to B only (instead of mixed) on the access point but no change.

As I have no internet from the Z I do not have kismet.

what can I try next ?

:: the access point is a linksys WAP54g (not the linux one)