[Liverpool] Wireless network cards

[Tony Burrows]

I've just bought a card for my laptop, with a Prism chipset.  The Netgear 
WG511.  Suse 9.1 detected it right away, but when I try to bring the card up 
(on boot or manually) I get this:

eth1: islpci_open()
eth1: resetting device...
eth1: uploading firmware...
prism54: request_firmware() failed for 'isl3890'
eth1: could not upload firmware ('isl13890')

Can anyone tell me what is going on, or how to deal with it?  I can understand 
the words, but not what is going on.  Why load firmware into the card?

Tony