I had some trouble getting my ipw2200 WIFI chipset to work in Debian Squeeze on my Toshiba Tecra M3. I made this terminal-style work-around bash script that both brought up the WIFI and connected to the router.
(Replace the brackets with your corresponding values.)
First off, install the package wpa_supplicant.
Then put your router WPA password into the wpa_supplicant conf-file:
wpa_passphrase (mywireless) "passphrase" > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
(Note that the citation marks are needed.)
Then put this into a text file:
rmmod ipw2200 && modprobe ipw2200 && sleep 1 && ifconfig eth0 down && ifconfig eth2 up && sleep 1 && iwconfig eth2 essid (mywireless) && wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -i eth2 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf && dhclient eth2
In my case the WIFI showed up as eth2. Be sure to check if yours turns into something different after the ipw2200 module is reloaded.
Then just make the script executable by "chmod +x (scriptfile)" and run it when you want to connect to your router.