Kismet asks some "unusual" things of wireless cards. Primarily, switching channels at a much higher rate than is normal. This may be a factor for ipw(4) (I've never had one).
Try running Kismet with channel hopping disabled after a cold boot of the system. Move your hostname.ipw0 out of the way and don't configure the card in any way, let Kismet do it. Pick a channel that you know has an active wireless network and watch the packet count indicator. source=radiotap_bsd_b,ipw0,ipw-static,6 channelhop=false If this works, try with hopping enabled but set the hop rate very low, start with e.g. a ten second hop timer: #channelvelocity=5 channeldwell=10 If this works, increase the hop rate until just before the problem re-occurs. The default hop rate of 5 channels per second is somewhat arbitrary, and you may need to decrease it for your hardware. If none of the above works, you will have to provide much more detail about what you are doing and the errors you are seeing.
