General :: Ifconfig Return "unknown Interface: No Such Device"

I'm trying to install a Linux driver for my wireless network card (D-Link DWL-G510) on my Red Hat Linux 7.1 machine with a 2.4.37.9 kernel. I downloaded the serial monkey driver from the sourceforge site and was able to successfully compile the rt73 module and load it into the kernel. The problem now is that everytime I issue the command ifconfig wlan0 up it keeps returning with the following error message: wlan0: unknown interface: No such device.

I'm at a loss as to what to do here. I specifed wlan0 as the alias for the rt73 module in the modules.conf and also tried to load the driver with the command modprobe rt73 ifname=wlan0 (this specifies the interface name according to the instructions packaged in the driver), but the error message still keeps coming up.

Is there something else I need to do in Linux to configure the wlan0 part or is the module not recognizing the wireless network card? It would be quite strange if it is the later since all information from the Internet is indicating this is the linux driver I should be using for mentioned wireless card.