The difference between the "Silver" and 'Gold" Lucent cards is the "Silver" only supported 40/64 bit WEP, while almost everything else in the universe uses 104/128 bit WEP. The original Grey Airport base stations only supported 64 bit WEP so by default Silvers work fine with them, no hacking, but on newer wireless access points it can be "confusing" to figure out how to make them work in 64 bit mode. (On some APs if you only enter a 5 character/10 hex digit WEP key it'll automatically switch to 64 bit mode, while entering a longer code enables 128 bit. Others might have a checkbox hidden somewhere on their UIs.) If you're willing to change to 40 bit WEP on your AP then you should be able to run with the Silver card. Just keep in mind that breaking *any* WEP encryption is technically completely trivial (there are war-driving tools that can do it in a few minutes at most), so all enabling WEP does is keep "casual" users sniffing for an unlocked network out. It's like locking your screen door... don't depend on it actually protecting you from "bad people".

For the record, the hardware is identical on the "Silver" and "Gold" cards. The Silver firmware just cripples it. If you have a Windows laptop with a PCMCIA slot and can find the appropriate firmware updater files there's a tool that can hack a Silver to a Gold here.