Help...please? Prism II and Orinoco

I am having nothing but problems getting my two linux boxes communicating via 
wireless.  

My laptop uses Mandrake 8.1 and a ZoomAir prism2-based card that appears to 
work OK.  I can certainly sniff networks and on one occassion, with MUCH 
trial and error, managed to connect to one of those networks.  What I cannot 
do is connect, ad-hoc, to my desktop.  For the laptop, I use 
linux-wlan-ng-0.1.10.  I setup my card/wireless parameters in 
/etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.opts:

<edited for brevity>
case "$ADDRESS" in
wlannoenable,*,*,*)
        #=======ENABLE========================================
        # Do we want to enable the card at all?  Set to 'n' if you don't
        # want the card initialized for normal operation.  Helpful for
        # (re)loading flash or for test purposes.
        WLAN_ENABLE=y
;;
*,*,*,*)
        #=======ENABLE========================================
        # Do we want to enable the card at all?  Set to 'n' if you don't
        # want the card initialized for normal operation.  Helpful for
        # (re)loading flash or for test purposes.
        WLAN_ENABLE=y

<skip encryption - not used yet...until connection success>

        #=======SELECT STATION MODE===================
        IS_ADHOC=y                      # y|n, y - adhoc, n - infrastructure

        #=======INFRASTRUCTURE STATION START===================
        # SSID is all we have for now
        AuthType="opensystem"           # opensystem | sharedkey (requires 
        #WEP)
        #       DesiredSSID="Tempus"
        #=======ADHOC STATION START============================
        SSID="Tempus"
        BCNINT=100                      # Beacon interval (in Kus)
        CHANNEL=6                       # DS channel for BSS (1-14, depends
                                                  #   on regulatory domain)
        BASICRATES="2 4"            # Rates for mgmt&ctl frames (in 500Kb/s)
        OPRATES="2 4 11 22"         # Supported rates in BSS (in 500Kb/s)
    ;;
esac

That's pretty much it.  I have also tried making the equivalent settings in 
/etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts but if I run the linux-wlan-ng app "mibedit" it 
doesn't detect/print the desired SSID as "Tempus" so I am not sure if it is 
set or not.

For the desktop to which I am trying to gain an ad-hoc connection, I have an 
Orinoco Gold card in a PCI pcmcia adaptor.  My desktop is a Mandrake 8.2 
system.  Plugging in the orinoco defaults to using the wvlan module.  I have 
also tried changing it to the orinoco_cs and wavelan module but in no case 
have I been able to get an ad-hoc connection.  On the desktop I set all the 
wireless parameters in the only available opt file:  
/etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts, though I find this file to be more confusing and 
poorly organized as compared to the wlan-ng.opts file.  Nonetheless, I have 
added "Tempus" to every line that I could find in it that seems to have 
anything to do with desired SSID.  I have also set the channel to 6, no WEP, 
etc, just as for the ZoomAir (to the extent that I BELIEVE I have made these 
settings given the poor layout and documentation in the wireless.opts file).

What does it take to get an ad-hoc connection working here?  Where have I 
gone wrong?  Which are THE correct option files to edit for getting the 
connection up and running?  Are there any nice GUI KDE (or even Gnomish) 
tools for setting up these things?  I am not overly pleased with mibedit 
supplied with the linux-wlan-ng package.  All it does is list all the MIBS 
and allow you to change them - most of the time not having any clue 
whatsoever as to whether the MIB needs changing, what it does, etc.  I would 
like a simple to use config tool, preferably for KDE, that is as easy and 
intuitive as the windoze GUI tools supplied on the CDs that come with many of 
these wlan cards.  Orinoco's config tool is especially nice... Are there any 
such beasts?

Praedor