[ILUG] Wifi keeps dropping off the net

[Steven Satelle]

I'm running a small wifi network at home (one server and one client) and
every few hours/minutes the network is dropped. The only thing appearing
in the syslog is:
Jul 12 12:45:22 localhost kernel: eth1: timeout waiting for mgmt
response
Jul 12 12:45:25 localhost last message repeated 3 times
Jul 12 12:45:25 localhost kernel: eth1: mgmt tx queue is still full
Jul 12 12:45:43 localhost last message repeated 55 times
there is nothing relivent either before or after it.
I'm running debian testing (sarge) and the nic is a 3com officeconnect
wireless 11g pc card.
I've noticed the connection will drop to 0% at intervels anyway, but I
assume this is caused by the distance between the ap and the card, 2
ceilings and a solid wall. But the difference is when this happens the
card will come back itself in a couple of moments whereas when it
'drops' I need to stop/start the net interface and re request an ip
address. 
The hotplug version is 0.0.20040329-11
my firmware version for the nic is 
1.0.4.3 built on Wed Jul 16 11:16:29