I cant seem to Associate myself with AP

[kevkid]

I am doing some testing with my linksys roter, I have an atheros card (ath5k)
and I cant seem to associate with the ap, It doesnt have mac filtering enabled.
I have tried the following

iwconfig wlan0 ap xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

and get an error as such

Interface wlan0 doesn't support MAC addresses
wlan0    Interface doesn't support MAC addresses
error for wireless request "Set AP Address" (8B1A):
      Invalid argument "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx"

I censored my mac address
then i tried this

iwconfig wlan0 essid linksys channel 6 ap <xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx>

and I got

Error for wireless request "set ESSID" (8B1A):
     Set failed on device wlan0 : Operation not supported.

What am I doing wrong?

[pieface]

Is your network interface in monitor mode?

aireplay-ng -1 6000 -o 1 -q 10 -a "AP-MAC" -h "INTERFACE-MAC" interface ..ie mon0

edit- What exactly are you trying to do?

[ravenrose]

I am not clear what you actually are trying to do because by using ,,iwconfig,, you manually configure your wifi to be connected to your network so you don't have to rely upon any network managers (wicd etc.)If you just want the association in order to be able to attack that AP / collect IVs later, then you are wrong here i think.
see here: Wirelessdefence.org