lol
I just did that exact build at home. You would believe what a nightmare it was. it literally took me days, if not weeks.
there is supposedly a driver (madwifi) that will do this, but I couldn't get it to work for me. So what I wound up doing is taking the (easier?) other way out and using ndiswrapper.
My words of wisdom from experience: don't go ANYWHERE near NetworkManager, and this will work. The following is a little hazy, sorry, but it does let you know it will work
1. you will need the kernel source files that have been set up with a 16k stack, as opposed to the usual 4k (I'm running the very latest kernel (_2139 I think) that has both that and SMP turned on, because my card is in an xSeries 342 server). Get that kernel, and install the source too (you may be able to yum all that, I found an rpm and since I'm at work, I can't find it right now)
2. copy the driver *.inf file and everything else from the windows (yes, windows) driver cd into some folder on the machine
3. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/ build ndiswrapper, and follow the instructions for installing a device using those drivers you copied earlier. I think when you build it, all you do is a ndiswrapper -i driver.inf , where driver = whatever the file name is.
4. Then try modprobe ndiswrapper
take a look at the end of your dmesg to make sure things are happening
5. do an iwconfig wlan0 ap any (or wifi0, or whatever it got named) and that should help in finding your access point (it might be that way by default, I'm hardly an expert)
6. finally, do a dhclient wlan0 (again, or whatever the device got named).
My dhclient sometimes takes a LoOOOOONG time to get an IP. once that's done, you can do all kinds of neat things like reset it to a static ip (useful for port forwarding). I also use iptable to give internet to 3 other servers that are on a hidden sub network behind the wireless server.
to do just that, I think it looks something like this:
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.30 netmask 255.255.255.0
and then a
route set default gw 192.168.1.1 wlan0
I believe those are the correct commands. of course 192.168.1.1 = your access point's IP, and the *.30 = whatever you want your machine to use instead of having it assigned by DHCP
If I have time tonight, I'll get my bookmarks from home and do you a better tutorial
bottom line: it can be done.
hope that helps