belkin F5D6020 v2 pcmcia (atmel) to rfmon mode?

Hi

got this F5D6020 working on redhat 9 with the atmel drivers from
sourceforge, and have seen it stated that the pcmcia version of this
belkin card can go into rfmon mode, but can't seem to do it.
kismet_monitor -H doesn't work, and the kismet server quits before
launching the client (doesn't reach the gui) saying "driver reporting
bad value", card not in rfmon mode.

has anyone gotten this card into rfmon/promiscuous mode?

the atmel driver readme says you must identify the atmel chipset in
the card- numbers like at76c503- but I haven't been able to do this.
anyone know? what do you do with this information once you have it?
some way to configure the driver, but I can't figure out how.

would love some extra brainpower on this, I'm stuck.

thanks,
Josh