I recently switched from wired to wireless networking on my 2.6.23-grml hard disk system. I configured wireless while the wired networking card was still in my laptop and connected. I'm sure I had wireless working because I set the cable modem on my ethernet port offline.
Now I've removed my wired networking equipment and GRML doesn't configure wireless networking. After a "modprobe bcm43xx" and "ifup eth1" the syslog records:
Microcode bcm43xx_microcode4.fw not available or load failed
That file is still in /lib/firmware, and its date predates the removal of my wired networking hardware.
"grml-network" doesn't see eth1, but "iwconfig" does.
I'm guessing that GRML loaded additional code at boot when it found a wired ethernet connection.