Thanks for the reminder - I had been meaning to install ubuntu one of these days and today seemed like a good day, especially with the details above.
I downloaded it and installed it. While the wireless card (DLink USB yoke) would associate with the AP, it kept dropping it after about 15s or so. Obviously this was going nowhere fast.
I did what was suggested by caffs friend, wired it up, selected all update sources, pushed the button, waited and without a reboot I was able to associate with the AP, get an IP address and Bob was my uncle.
From looking at the various forums out there it seems that the DLink DWL-G122 cards are a little flaky to say the least. Well the drivers are anyway. I know the Windows one cannot work with an AP that is not broadcasting its SSID. I can associate correctly in Windows, but after some time (20 minutes or something) the link drops. Get the AP to broadcast the SSID and it never drops the link.
Because my card was USB and not PCI I used the command 'lsusb' but there wasn't as much info provided. At least since the card was external I could look up the model number on it and do Tigers suggested search for ubuntu issues.
Cheers,
z