hostap doesn't understand wireless commands

[Praedor Atrebates]

I have built and rebuilt the hostap driver to no avail.  I am running Mandrake 
9.0 on an IBM Thinkpad.  Kernel is 2.4.19-16mdk.  The module loads fine upon 
initial insertion of the prism2 card but it insists on going into managed 
mode, channel 4, with essid "test".  I have editied my 
/etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts so that it would be ad-hoc, channel 6, essid tower.  
Why is this being ignored?  I have also tried setting up the device at bootup 
by editing ifcfg-wlan0 so that it contains the proper data.  Ignored, just as 
wireless.opts is ignored.

I then try to use iwconfig but hostap refuses to understand/accept any 
command.  Upon initial insertion of the card, if I run iwconfig I get 
essid:"test" Mode:Master Freq:2.422GHz.  NO NO NO!  I then try to set it with 
iwconfig to be correct: "iwconfig wlan0 mode ah-hoc" and the result is a 
pause of about 3 seconds then:

Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) : SET failed on device wlan0 ; 
Invalid argument.

This does change the card to ad-hoc mode but then totally borks the ability to 
change anything else short of restarting pcmcia services (and then being 
right at square one again).

I am using the latest wireless tools and the kernel is about as new as you can 
get and still be reasonably stable.  It DOES include the latest available 
wireless extensions.  I just built the hostap driver for this kernel.  Why 
can't it understand and accept perfectly valid config commands?  What is 
going on here.  Oh, once I try to set the card manually with iwconfig, the 
display of info produced by iwconfig drops to a bare minimum to only include 
the Mode, Tx-Pwr, Encryption key, and signal/noise levels.  No channel, no 
freq.  Any attempt to set channel or freq results results in failure:

Error for wireless request "Set Frequency"(8B04);
SET failed on device wlan0; Invalid argument.

NO NO NO.  IT IS A VALID FRICKIN ARGUMENT.  Its rejection is invalid.  Can 
anyone explain the problem and how to get around it here?  What file is 
hostap looking to for initial setup params?  

praedor