I have to apologize for wasting everyones time and i appreciate all your help
i followed the tutorial from xploitz to the letter and couldn't make anything happen except an authentication timed out message so i erased wpa_supplicant- downloaded it in windows to a thumb drive and recreated it in backtrack-- still didn't happen so i got pissed and tried just putting the key into wireless assistant again after editing the .conf file changed my interface in the drop down menu to ath1 instead of ath0 and what a suprise- i just burned 3 days and did my best to piss off everyone who actually knows what they are doing> my bad
thanks for the help though- now i think i'll slink away and leave you guys alone to help solve real problems while i re-read the 285 pages of slackware manual i printed in a fury cause "boo-hoo" i didn't have no internet--
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i am the damn dumbest smart person i know,
happily writing from bt3 on harddrive-- some villages' idiot, J05HUA