Need help configuring madwifi drivers

I have a Netgear WG311 card on a slackware system, and finally was able to successfully compile the latest madwifi drivers from CVS. However, now that they are compiled and installed, I'm having quite a hard time configuring them. So far, what I've done is:

Code:

---

modprobe ath_pci
iwconfig ath0 key ...
iwconfig ath0 ap XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
iwconfig ath0 channel XX
iwconfig ath0 essid ...
iwconfig ath0 rate 54M
ifconfig ath0 up

---

However, after that I don't know what to do. ifconfig shows that ath0 is up, but I don't have an IP address. I cannot ping any other machine on my network, on the internet, or my router (says network is unreachable). I'm trying to configure it to receive a IP from my router using DHCP, but dhclient says it can't find ath0. What do I need to do to connect to my network? If I get my network up, what do I need to do to get online (have adsl, connect through my network)? Can I load these modules and configure my card at startup?

I have seen network configuration scripts that are meant to be put in /etc/sysconfig/... but those directories do not exist. Do I need to create these directories and write a configuration script?

Thank you in advance for any assistance. If you need any output from a program, I'd be happy to oblige.