I have also had difficulties with the WCF12 card both on a linux based
iPAQ and on the Balloon.

Although it may be worth a check my Balloon boards are in a system with
a decent 3v3 power source (2 ampsish) and I still can't get the WCF to
fire up, host-ap gives a Warning "Secondary station firmware version
1.4.2 does not seem to work in Host AP mode" although the card is
recognised and installed.
I've not recently tried other drivers but Orinoco certainly failed the
last time I tried.

I'd be interested to know which CPLD version you have
(/proc/balloon_board) as older CPLD's can't reset PCMCIA cards properly
under CPU control, however given my issues with this CF card I doubt if
this is the problem.

David.