hi, i'm woo, I'm a newer to CentOS. I installed my CentOS5.3(2.6.18-128.el5) in VMware. And my wireless card is MERCURY 54U(Atheros AR5xxx).I plugged the USB card into my virtual machine, but it couldn't be found.
First off. Which VMWare program are you using? There are some pretty big differences between the Player/Workstation/Server family and the ESX(i)/vSphere family of products.
ESX you can pretty much write that idea off unless you have a newer system that supports Intel's VT-d (or AMD's equivalent). Player is a bit different if it's a usb device as you can attach to the guest a required.
Assuming Player, are you *absolutely sure* that you connected the USB device to the guest per VMware's procedures? If yes, what's the output of "lsusb"? We need to know *if* it's being seen by the guest at all to begin with.