Installing a Microsoft MN-710 usb wireless adapter

[alienjon]

When I am up at school (for the better part of 9 months out of the year) I am on a broadband connection and all is happy in my little world but when I come home for holidays/breaks/whenever and bring my computer home with me I cannot connect to the internet via Gentoo. I have been using a microsoft MN-710 usb wireless adapter in windows xp (which has been working just fine, so I know the adapter works alright). I have been trying to install it properly in linux but I haven't seemed to make any progress whatsoever and the other 2 posts I have come accross that pertain to this model seem to help in different ways but I haven't even gotten as far as they have at this point.

The first thing I should say (since I think this is where I should start) is that when I boot up my computer I don't get any lights going to the adapter whatsoever. For my other usb devices (and in windows as well) when I plug the device in the led turns on in some sense of the word even if the device doesn't work. To me this means that I don't have my kernel setup properly to read the device. I have usb devices working correctly in my kernel (my mouse, bluetooth dongle, etc... are usb and have been working fine) but the wireless adapter won't do anything (I have hot and coldplugging installed and functioning)

I won't bother talking about anything else since I think this is the first step in getting the adapter to work.

Any ideas?