wireless card dead?

(I posted this on linux.debian.user on 29/02/08 but I had no reply
whatsoever. Sorry if somebody hits it twice)

Basically, I can't use my wireless card anymore, an
Intel Pro-wireless 2200BG. The machine is a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo
M1425 laptop. OS is Debian unstable. All of a sudden, iwconfig and
dmesg report that the kill switch is
on (meaning, intuitively enough, that the card is off...), which is
confirmed by

>cat /sys/bus/.../ipw2200/rf_kill
>2

Any attempt to change that value to zero is fruitless. Manually
switching on and
off the wireless switch does nothing. Only sometimes the
wireless led stays on for some 20 seconds and then dies again. Even
during those 20-30 seconds the light is on, iwconfig reports kill
switch as on (meaning card off...). The
only thing that makes me doubt about it being a hardware problem
is that, when somehow said led is on, it consistently turns itself
off as soon as I modprobe the module for the card.

Apart from a hibernate upgrade some two days ago (which I have
already downgraded just in case) I can't see anything relevant I
might've installed this recently.

I get the same with several kernels and even with a live CD.
Nothing I found in google solve/apply to my case. I don't know what
to do now to check where the problem lies...Possibly unrelated (but
who knows?) the other day the date and time as reported by the
system was something like 2026, which makes me suspect of a nearly
exhausted CMOS battery. Any suggestions/experiments I could do to
find out whether the hardware is dead would be very welcome, even
if it involves opening the beast up.