First you need to download a driver that works from serialmonkey; untar it in a folder in home called /wireless and then make and install it by issuing the following commands in a terminal:

$ cd wireless/rt73-x.x.x/Module
$ sudo make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo modprobe rt73

Next edit the file modules in /etc

$ sudo gedit /etc/modules

and add the line:

rt73

and save the file.

Next edit the file /etc/modprobe.d which will be a new file if this is your first installation

$ sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/rt73

and add the line:

alias rausb0 rt73

and save the file.

Finally edit the file /etc/network/interfaces

$ sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces

and add the lines:

auto rausb0
iface rausb0 inet dhcp
pre-up ifconfig rausb0 up
pre-up ifconfig rausb0 down
pre-up ifconfig rausb0 up
pre-up iwconfig rausb0 essid "<ESSID>"
pre-up iwconfig rausb0 mode Managed
pre-up iwpriv rausb0 set AuthMode=WPAPSK
pre-up iwpriv rausb0 set EncrypType=TKIP
pre-up iwpriv rausb0 set WPAPSK="<KEY>"
pre-up ifconfig rausb0 up

changing ESSID to your network essid and KEY to your password, then save the file.

That's all you should need to do!

It is worth pointing out here that the above also works with Ubuntu 7.04 (feisty fawn) providing that Network Manager is not installed. If it is installed then it can be removed with synaptic.

When upgrading to 7.10 (gutsy gibbon) I had two problems: The source code was too big for the kernel and you can check this out by typing the following:

ls -alh rt73.ko

if the filesize is MBs then it is too big and the following needs to be run:

sudo strip -S rt73.ko

running the ls command should then giva a filesize of about 245KB which can then be made and installed.

rausb0 is deprecated in Gutsy, so all references to it in the above need to be replaced with wlan0.