If you want to clear EVERYTHING from your drive, you can run the following:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/yourusbdrive
obviously replace yourusbdrive with hdb or sdb, however your version of Linux reads it..

I ran into this problem on my Laptop with Fedora 11, with the b43 chipset..

What I did, was I used fwcutter, got the firmware and installed it that way, works amazingly..

I like KDE, it is a GREAT Desktop... But for some reason I always choose GNOME... I think it is because it doesnt remind me of Windoze as much as KDE does..

9.6 Catalyst drivers havent really worked since a few kernels ago... it just basically does not work..