wireless pcmcia card not showing up..


Forum: Networking
Topic: wireless pcmcia card not showing up..
started by: lap
Posted by lap on April 05 2006,17:22
I have a acer 3023 laptop with dsl 2.3 on a usb pendrive..

my problem is that my wireless pcmcia  card:Netgear WG511T(atheros chipset) doesn't work.
it doesnt even show up in the cardmanager

is the problem with the pcmcia slot or the card?
it does work in other linux distros..

im a bit new to linux so i tell me if you need more info to understand
my probem..

help would be greatly appreciated..
Posted by mmullers on April 10 2006,15:36
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
Posted by bokaroseani on April 12 2006,14:52
Hi mmullers,

I have a Sony Vaio PCG SR33 laptop and intend to use a PCMCIA wireless card with it once I have frugal installed DSL on it. At the moment I am still struggling with partitioning my drive.

I had to use a cheatcode "pci=off" in order to boot with DSL cd on this laptop. I am curious if you know anything about what this cheatcode means (since you mention about another similar cheatcode pci=Assign-Busses). While this cheatcode boots fine, I get a message somewhere while booting "modprobe: modprobe could not locate module block-major-2." I am wondering if this might cause a big problem in the my laptop's normal functioning. Would you know anything about this?
Posted by doobit on April 12 2006,15:12
block-major-2 usually means you don't have a floppy drive.
Posted by bokaroseani on April 12 2006,15:21
Thanks doobit.

That explains. So I shouldnt worry about it.

Anirban
Posted by SocomRod on April 23 2006,15:40
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.
Posted by dvance on April 28 2006,01:33
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
Posted by roberts on April 28 2006,18:03
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
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