Getting Wireless on an Old Laptop

Forum: Networking
Topic: Getting Wireless on an Old Laptop
started by: Odin

Posted by Odin on May 26 2006,17:19

I am Linux n00b in need of help. I have a formidable NEC Versa 6060 Laptop with a whopping 32mb of ram and a blistering p166 with that futuristic MMX technology all the kids rave about.

DSL is the only distro that makes my machine very, very fast ... only problem I can't get my Linksys WPC11 version 3 wireless card to work with it. I have tried to configure it, but to no avail--unless I missed something. I could put the driver from Linksys on a floppy or USB flash drive, but then I don't know how to get it in the system (I have read and tried, read, and tried--I seem to suck at this).

Could somebody be kind enough to help a N00b get this straightened out? I am afraid of getting windoze DTs.

By the way, DSL is installed on the HD and is the only thing on there.

Posted by tomv on May 26 2006,19:23

Ooh, exactly the specs of my Toshiba (P166 MMX/32RAM). But when booting, it turns out mine only runs at 165 MHz, so yours must be faster :-)

I can help a little, not a lot. You need to 'mount' the removable device in Linux. This means you run the mount command with the proper specs, then you will go to a directory on the HD , and find the contents of the removable drive there.

Copy the file to a floppy disk from another system
Put the disk in the notebook
Open a command window
Type "mount /dev/floppy /mnt/floppy" <--from memory
(could be "mount /dev/fd1 /mnt/floppy" or something similar.

Type 'ls /dev' to get a listing of all possible devices, and 'ls /mnt' to see all current mount points. (This would work for a CD you had burned too, "mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom")

Anyway, after you get the floppy mounted, you can go to that directory ("cd /mnt/floppy") and copy the file(s) to somewhere more useful (i.e. "cp * /home/DSL" --this is a command line copy method - cp SOURCE_FILE(s) TARGET_DIR )

Now, what to do with the files once you get them there, don't know, but there are probably web resources to help you there.

Posted by Odin on May 26 2006,21:18

Thanks, I will give it a shot and let you know how it works out. I sincerely appreciate your help, man!

Oh, the p166 actually shows up as 164 at boot, so you got me beat you speed demon!

Posted by DaveJ45 on May 26 2006,22:40

Actually, you almost got it right.

DSL won't let the user mount the floppy, so the correct command would be

sudo mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

fd1 would be the second floppy drive (if you had one!)

Good Luck!

Posted by Odin on May 27 2006,02:53

Thanks everyone ... now if only I can figure out how to install these drivers properly!

Posted by tedmoore99 on May 27 2006,10:23

That's what's fun about dsl, one day you are a noob and the next day you get to help someone else. I just finished getting my wpc11 card working so here goes.
1. click on the dsl panel
2. select the ndiswrapper button
3. the first slot - full path to driver inf file (/fd0/xxxxxx.inf)
4. second slot - leave alone
5. third slot - name of wireless network (mine is linksys, yours might be different)
6. fourth slot - if wep is set, enter encryption code like this xx:xx:xx:xx:xx)
7. Press OK and keep your fingers crossed.
Keep me posted!

Posted by Odin on May 27 2006,13:03

Hey everybody, it works! Got it working by using iwconfig. I am a dummie. I was forgetting to put the ":" between numbers when typing in the WEP. Once I did that ... BAM! ... "You are connected!"

Everybody in this forum is awesome! Especially the guys that helped me out. You answered the cry of a frustrated lone n00b lost in the DSL woods. Now I hope I can someday help somebody else.

Now on to coping with with surfing the Web with a slow machine. Dillo is pretty cool. With 32mb, Firefox and Opera lock up occasionally, requiring me to reboot.

DSL rocks! Thanks again!