dmesg shows one line that catches my attention:
Invalid RF chipset 0x3070 detected
Then it ignores the dongle completely, and resumes boot.
Although I have managed to fix this once by blacklisting the original drivers and using custom ones, it doesn't seem to work now; I can't seem to find a way around it!
I have a Raspberry Pi Model B rev. 1 with 256MB RAM and a TEXET 2GB card that has been completely fine with all operating systems. I'm using the latest Debian and would like the adapter to work with the WiFi program (wpa_gui) that's prebundled with Raspbian and I don't mind if it comes up with ra0 or wlan0.
Thanks