JimC:
I am curious exactly the rt-chipped usb wifi which is up (manufacturer, revision, etc.) at least on the level to allow some traffic. 
Do You configure the rausb0 via a config file at bootime or load manually the driver, and manually iwconfig-ifconfig it?
See my May 18, 2007, 05:29:50 PM post in this thread (I copied and pasted what I did into that post).
But, I was unable to get it working again after a reboot with Vector 5.8 SOHO (see my later posts about issues, including something causing the ESSID to be truncated).
My adapter shows up this way using lsusb in most distros (it's a Belkin USB Wireless G Adapter).
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 050d:7050 Belkin Components F5D7050 ver 1000 WiFi
Note that the rt2570 driver from serialmonkey does seem to be working OK in PCLinuxOS 2007 Test 4 with all updates (I haven't bothered to try the final yet). But, it does seem to be "flaky" with Vector 5.8 SOHO (at least using iwconfig to configure it after a reboot) for some reason.
With a number of distros, it works without needing to "jump through hoops" (driver already in the distros to support rt2570).
For example, it worked in Vector 5.1.2 SOHO Live, PCLinuxOS 0.92, SimplyMEPIS 6.0, 6.5, some of the Kanotix releases, and others. Ubuntu seems to like it OK, too (multiple releases work OK with it). Ditto for the later Fedora 7 test releases (and I've never tried their earlier releases to see if it works with them or not). Heck, even Puppy works with it from a Live CD (at least 2.12 and later) just by typing modprobe rt2570 and using iwconfig to set it up). I can even use it from some of the rescue CD type distros around. It seems to be a well supported chipset with most distros. It typically shows up as rausb0 when it is supported by a distro.
