Networking :: wireless pcmcia card not showing up..

Quote (mmullers @ April 10 2006,11:36)

Hi,

Any luck yet? I'm running a Netgear MA511 and I had a heck of a time getting it to work. Works great now, as usual, now that I have figured out the problem (I've often been called the master of the obvious).

My Netgear worked with some older Linux distributions, then stopped working when I tried an upgrade to SuSe 9.2. After much Googling, I found that my particular laptop bios had an incompatibility with the 2.4 kernel, and I had to start inserting the boot cheatcode PCI=ASSIGN-BUSSES. This is the only way I can get it to work with DSL (and many other distributions). However, the Netgear works fine on the same laptop with distributions that use a 2.6 kernel.

You might check lspci and see if your card is even showing up; I guess from your post it isn't. If you need help with that, let me know.

By the way, I even had trouble using the same cheatcode when booting the DSL 2.3 CD, but after I created the DSL for my pen drive, I added it to the command line options during USB install. All works fine now.

Let me know if I can be of any help, I'm not an expert, but I've been a Unix user for a very long time, and a true Linux convert for over 3 years. I may have some small bit of wisdom I can impart to help you.

mmullers@yahoo.com

I have the same card with the same problem.

My question is, how do I use a cheatcode with a HD install?

Is there a way to permanently setup that cheatcode? The Wiki indicates that it only works with a live cd boot.

Sorry, I am still completely green at this.

same here
i have a Netgear MA521, i believe it shows with the PCMCIA tool
and lspci shows that it is recognized
however i have no idea how to get it to run
i will appreciate any advice

According to the ndiswrapper.sourgeforge.net website, this card should work using the XP drivers from the realtek site and using ndiswrapper. DSL v.24RC2 has the latest stable version of ndiswrapper. I would give that a go.

A general outline to use.

As root

1. Copy the XP drivers from the zip file to /home/dsl
2. ndiswrapper -i netrtw.inf
3. ndiswrapper -l
Should display device present
4. modprobe ndiswrapper
5. iwconfig
Should display an unconfigured device, will show device name usually wlan0

If you get this far then it will usually work.

6. Enter iwconfig commands Typically like these
iwconfig wlan0 essid your_net_name_here
iwconfig wlan0 key your_key_here_with_colons_pairs essis your_net_name_here
7 pump -i wlan0

I don't have this card, this is just a general outline which has worked for many cards and usb devices that I have tested.
The inf and sys files may be a different name.

The realtek site is here.

Alternatively, you could unzip the drives into home dir and try the ndiswrapper GUI. It does basically the same as I have tried to outline above.

HTH

original here.