I've been trying for some time now to get my Orinoco Gold pcmcia wireless card working with gentoo without success. The kernel modules consistently hang the system and orinoco-sn fails to merge (bug #209474, been around since 2/08). Anyway, I'm ready to give up on this thing. Can anyone recommend a wireless pcmcia device that they currently have working with a 2.6.24 kernel? I'm really anxious to un-tether this laptop.
Strange that the orinoco doesn't work. Have you tried using the vanilla kernel instead of the gentoo patched one? I can't check from here and I can't get into the bug tracker to see what that bug you posted is, but I use a Orinoco gold 802.11b card in my thinkpad with gentoo and I've never had issues with it. (I run vanilla kernel though, so that may be the difference)