Noticed that my zd1201 adapter isn't "seen" by hal and NetworkManager.
The problem seems to be that unlike other network device drivers I
checked, zd1201 does not do a SET_NETDEV_DEV(), which makes it so a
"device" symlink is created under /sys/class/net/wlan0.
With the following patch the device symlink shows up, and now I am
happily using NetworkManager to control the adapter:
$ ls -l /sys/class/net/wlan0
total 0
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec 18 13:42 address
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec 18 13:42 addr_len
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec 18 13:42 broadcast
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec 18 13:42 carrier
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Dec 18 13:42 device -> ../../../devices/pci0001:10/0001:10:1b.1/usb4/4-1
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 4096 Dec 18 13:42 features