At first, after plugging in the adapter in the usb port it was not recognised. After some research, it appears that the problem is the usb-uhci driver loaded when booting. The uhci driver should be used instead. The command "modprobe -r usb-uhci" removes the driver and "modprobe uhci" loads uhci driver. On plugging in the adapter, the system console has a message "No config. file found...". "iwconfig" confirms the driver is recognised and can be configured. Alternatively, under yast2->system->editor for /etc/sysconfig->hardware->hotplug->Hotplug_usb_hostcontroller_list, remove the "usb-uhci" driver from the list. The default is "ehci-hcd ohci-hcd uhci-hcd usb-uhci uhci usb-ohci ehci-hcd". It is changed to "ehci-hcd ohci-hcd uhci-hcd uhci usb-ohci ehci-hcd". The same procedure worked with my laptop. The first time the adapter was plugged in, there was a kernel panic. After a reboot, the adapter was recognised and connected with the wireless access pint. I hope this is useful for others trying to configure such an adapter in SuSE 8.2.