These are the commands that work for me to manually enable the card with WEP128. This was the easiest way to get it working even if it isnt hotpluggable. I put it into my network config startup scripts. You obviously need dhcp-isc and madwifi installed and ya need to use your own key and essid

ifconfig ath0 up
iwconfig ath0 mode managed
iwconfig ath0 nick “Netgear”
iwconfig ath0 channel 9
iwconfig ath0 key hexvalofkeywithout0x
iwconfig ath0 essid “your ssid”
dhclient