I think your chances of getting the Realtek PCI card to work without ndiswrapper are slim. I've been at it for a while (CardBus card on a laptop, Netgear MA521) and your best bet is ndiswrapper or the pay version from Linuxant.
I will persevere with ndiswrapper for my own education in the meantime. If anything useful comes out of the experiments I'll post it to the list.
Follow-up - using the latest CVS of ndiswrapper, and the current Realtek WinXP driver, success! I now have a good signal and transfer rates. :) It'll still be Netgear in future though... ;) Thanks for the pointers. Vince Legal Disclaimer: Any views expressed by the sender of this message are not necessarily those of Application Solutions Ltd. Information in this e-mail may be confidential and is for the use of the intended recipient only, no mistake in transmission is intended to waive or compromise such privilege. Please advise the sender if you receive this e-mail by mistake.