Wireless USB adapters can see DD-WRT wireless network

[oldserverguy]

This is my first (actually second if you count my run on) post so please be gentle with critiques.

THE TITLE SHOULD SAY: CAN NOT SEE!!!

My system:
Old Toshiba Satellite 64 bit laptop with both Win 10 and Kali Linux 2020.1b - downloaded 3/18/2020
Xfce default desktop and the large collection of tools - 2,428 files downloaded
USB adapter #1 -old Alfa AWUS036H - no version number - shows as RTL8187 chipset
USB adapter #2 -old TP-LINK TL-WN722N - no version number - shows as ath9k_htc AR 9271 802.11N

My target:
Old WRT54G router with DD-WRT v24?sp2 8/7/10 installed
Wireless setup as mixed mode, channel 11 (also tried 6), SSID broadcast enabled
WPA2 personal with TKIP

Problem:
Using Fern wifi Cracker GUI (also tried terminal)
With either #1 or #2 cannot see the dd-wrt network but I can see my other 2.4 networks and neighbors
With Win 10 can see dd-wrt wireless and use it as the internet connection

What's the cause and what's the fix?

[oldserverguy]

Title s/b "cannot see" - guess my old fingers don't work so well any more.

[oldserverguy]

After a full upgrade decided to try doing a manual password find. Running sudo airodump-ng wlan1mon - I can see the dd-wrt access point. Get MAC and then can see a connected (Win 7) client.

HUH???

[oldserverguy]

Interesting. As part of learning about Kali I built a USB drive with persistence. Amazing that when I boot from it Fern can now see the DD-WRT router. I'm assuming that something happened to my hard disk install so I'm going to reinstall Kali and see what happens. I assume it's a good idea to NOT delete the partitions from Windows but just do a reinstall. If that's incorrect please let me know ASAP.

FYI - I also ordered a used Dell T3500 with what looks like the correct hardware to run "John". It will be here in a week what with the shipping delays occurring.

[oldserverguy]

I reinstalled to the hard drive from my DVD and still can't see my DD-WRT wireless network. But the software versions are slightly different. I'm going to document them here and then quit.

Works (USB) Doesn't Work (DISK)
Rev 94 Rev 94 Currently installed version
3.7.5 3.8.2 Python
1.5.2 - (c) 1.6 - (c) 2 Aircrack
5.13.2 5.14.2 QT Version

Oh well. Time now to quit. Can't spend anymore resources. I will try a new download of the 64 bit install and see what happens.