Two wireless network adapters

[ChiefFox]

Usually in NetworkManager Applet 0.7.0.100 you can connect to multiple network adapters. Just above the scanned wireless networks it will show the name of the adapter. But I still have both adapters plugged in, and instead of showing both adapters with their respected names of the adapter, it just lists only one, as "wireless networks". One adapter is a Broadcom (PCI slot) using the linux driver (B43). The other network adapter is a USB dongle, Belkin USB 54G. the Belkin is version 2 (doesn't matter) and I have that driver set up using Windows Wireless Drivers... I believe it is called Ndiswrapper..? Now I also have this other utility to change wireless settings, called RutilT WLAN Mananger. Both only show one adapter. In theory I would like to use both adapters hoping to speed up my connection, because I am so far from my router (300-some ft. away), it's only reading at a rate of 1 Mb/s.
Pulling up a command of

ifconfig

or

iwconfig

I notice there is only one adapter showing up. So I'm not sure what happened as to why it stopped reading both adapters. Does having two adapters help at all with speed anyway?
I tried to boost speed by doing this:

Code: Select all

iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M

and that command stopped the internet from reading, and that didn't work. Also changing the rate to 24M doesn't work. Only 12M or less works, and seems to be a little faster but it's hard to tell if it actually is speeding it up. It should be a fast cable connection, but loading simple pages with photos takes long time to load pictures. My router has WEP encryption and I checked the log file for the router, and nobody else is accessing my router.

Throw out your suggestions.

Also noticed over a given amount of time, maybe 30 minutes or so, I am no longer to connect and when I try to connect I get this error message:

Can't set operating mode: Managed
Code: 16

Here is some other information for you:
Gnome 2.26.1
LinuxMint Release 7 (Gloria)
Kernel Linux 2.6.28-16-generic
1.9 GiB Memory
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
Available disk space: 855 GiB
Load averages for last 1, 5, 15 minutes: 0.74, 0.40, 0.44

[ChiefFox]

(ndiswrapper) Windows Wireless Driver
for the Belkin 54G USB network adapter

[ChiefFox]

more info: leaving the wlan0 rate to default settings (1Mb/s) is truely faster than setting it manually to 12M/s... still not sure if both adapters are working together or what... and I noticed my internet will lock up when using Transmission BitTorrent Client on 12M/s rate. Currently my Tx rate is 1 Mbps by default, sometimes jumps up on its own to 2 Mbps or 5 Mbps, but mostly stays around 1. I imagine it's because of the distance to my router.
Signal strength is usually in the lower 30 percentile.
Signal Level : -82 dBm
Noise Level : -70 dBm

[ChiefFox]

well I just decided to uninstall the driver for the Belkin usb, using ndiswrapper. As you can see in the screenshots attached, the driver name was rt2500usb and I successfully removed the driver. It seemed to have no effects to speed or connectivity. From what I see, the PCI adapter is the only one connecting at the moment, based on the MAC address of the hardware, by looking at the Networking Settings.
Link Quality: 35%
Signal Level: -78 dBm
Noise Level: -69 dBm