Weird problem with belkin card.

Hello. I have a belkin card F5D6020 (802.11b prism2 pcmcia, firmware
0.8.3) which has always worked fine in linux and windows. Today when
I inserted the card it just wouldn't associate with any AP. It can still
detectd access points using scanning software such as Kismet, and it
works in ad-hoc mode too. It just doesn't associate to APs. Nothing has
been changed in the laptop or operating systems. If anyone has had
a similar problem please speak up cause I'm about to throw the thing
out the window.
Is it possible for an hardware component to burn and leave a card
behaving like this? Is it worth trying to upgrade the firmware?

thanks!