Safecom SWMULZ-5400 & Knetworkmanager trouble

[Bauldrick]

I currently use a wireless ethernet adapter to connect, but will want to use this elsewhere.

This device works flawlessly in my kids Edubuntu machines with networkmanager(?), but is not even recognised in Kubuntu.

Main problem I see is when issuing 'dmesg' I get this:

ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth1: link is not ready

If I do 'iwlist scan' the device will scan and pick up my network and my direct neighbour', so it's working I presume. I thought it might be something to do with security (I'm WPA2), so I created file /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf and added:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=0
network={
ssid=<network>
psk=<passphrase>
proto=WPA2
priority=5
}

Then added to /etc/network/interfaces :

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
network 192.168.0.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
address 192.168.0.110
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1

pre-up wpa_supplicant -Bw -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dwext
post-down killall -q wpa_supplicant

No joy? anybody know as to why it works superbatively under one (I suppose gnome), but not the other (kde?)

lsmod brings up the module:

usbcore 162864 6 zd1211rw,usb_storage,libusual,ehci_hcd,ohci_hcd

lsusb shows the device:

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0ace:1215 ZyDAS