DSL Tips and Tricks :: Trick to loading wireless card (Dell 1350)



Quote (safesys @ April 16 2006,18:07)
if you can clarify what mean by "I can't get DSL to save the edited file to disk." then someone might have come across it before and be able to help save you some time.


I finally got it to save, and hda1 mounted and ndiswrapper installed the card.  Interestingly, the operating system tried to find the wireless driver before it had a chance to load, and printed an error when " ls /etc/ndiswrapper" didn't produce anything. The whole process slows up the initial boot, perhaps waiting for the wireless connection before moving on to load the desktop, but is probably faster than loading the card manually.   Thanks for your help on this!
I have a Dell 1300 Laptop with a sigmatel wireless card.
I'm booting off a usb pen.

I've copied the wireless card drivers from windows onto my usb pen.  I've also installed ndiswrapper from cd (as network not working yet).

When I try to configure the card using ndiswrapper I manage to load the driver ok but if I;

modprobe ndiswrapper

my laptop freezes and I have to reboot.

I've tried several times to configure the card through a term session and using the gui tool but my laptop always locks up.

Has anyone had this problem ??

K
Quote (kulkulcaan @ April 21 2006,07:24)
I have a Dell 1300 Laptop with a sigmatel wireless card.


When I try to configure the card using ndiswrapper I manage to load the driver ok but if I;

modprobe ndiswrapper

my laptop freezes and I have to reboot.


K


Did you try uninstalling the driver  "ndiswrapper -e netcard" , and/or removing it first "rmmod ndiswrapper" before loading it again?
From the ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net site:

Install Windows driver

Important: Do NOT use drivers on your CD. They may work, but you may experience kernel crashes etc., if the driver on your CD has not been tested.

Instead you should check the ndiswarpper.sourceforge.net site for where to download a tested and known working driver.

Look for an update in ndiswrapper in the next version of DSL.
Just thought I'd chime in here, to give a rundown of what I did to get the 1350 card to work.

First my setup:

DSL setup on a Dell Inspiron 1000.
Dell partition is still hda1
extended partition for hda2

hda3 and hda4 are in the extended partition
hda3 is setup ext2fs, and this is where I have a frugul grub install done.
hda4 is raiserFS, and where I backup my stuff to.

First off, I set my backup to go to hda4

I copied the bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys to /mnt/hda4

Run ndiswrapper, and set the path to /mnt/hda4/bmcwl5.inf
Device is wlan0
and ssid is whatever your network name is [in your router, not your windows workgroup name ;)]

Key - I had to change my router from wpa-psk to 128bit WEP, and once you do that, input the hexadecimal key that your router gives you, and remember to enter it with a colon between each set.   i.e. 71:5b:cf...

Now, go into /opt/bootlocal.sh  and add this:

mount /dev/hda4

This will mount the hard drive where your wireless drivers are before it tries to load the wireless.

Save, backup, and reboot, and you should be good.

I hope this helps out, it took me quite a while to dig this all up and get it working, so I thought this might help some of you guys.

Also, be sure to change the hard drive locations where applicable for your individual setup :)
Next Page...
original here.