Trouble with CF PC card

[Goodleaf, John M]

Hello, 
I was recently given a Socket Low Power WLAN card, in compact flash form.
I've been trying to get in running plugged into the compact flash reader on
my old IBM X20 laptop. It's running FBSD 5.2.1. 

I'm not really sure how to proceed. I've never tried to run wireless stuff
on FreeBSD, or to run it on a laptop for that matter. When the card inserted
the machine reads it as follows (I'm doing this from memory)
pccard1:  unknown card <some hex codes for product and manufacturer>
pccard1: CIS info Socket, CF+ LP WLAN Card Rev B

So the card appears to be picked up and identified correctly, at least on
the second line. Moreover, it is listed as a supported chipset in the wi man
page. But:
wicontrol yields SIOC<something I don't quite remember> device not
configured.
ifconfig -a lists only the loopback interface.
running pccardd yields something like NO PC CARD

I do have pccard_enable in rc.conf and if I boot with the card plugged in,
it is listed in the boot log, in the same manner as above. 

I'm sure the problem is that I don't know what the hell I'm doing and the
solution is not immediately obvious. Can anyone recommend a place where I
can rtfm? So far I've seen only stuff for wicontrol, which isn't working for
reasons I don't grasp.

Thanks,
John