Wifi Card WoesForum: Networking Topic: Wifi Card Woes started by: kingsinger Posted by kingsinger on April 19 2007,00:36
So DSL looks really good for this old laptop I'm trying to get running but I can't get the wifi card to work.Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite 2100CDS 400 with 192MB RAM and 4 gb drive. I initially tried using a Linksys WPC54G Broadcom card with NDISWrapper. That did not work. So I bought a Netgear WG511T. That didn't work either. Neither would the PC Card Ethernet (Xircom Card). I could however connect to the internet using a Linksy USB ethernet adapter. Eventually, through some research, I determined that there might be an issue with the PC card slot. I made an adjustment in the BIOs and now the Xircom Card is working. Then I booted into Xubuntu from a live CD. Under that, I was able to get the Netgear card working. So at this point, I know that it can work at a hardware level. It just doesn't seem to want to work under DSL. This is too bad, because I think DSL would be a better fit for this machine in terms of performance. But the machine would be more useful with working wifi. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I'm really new to Linux. So please assume total idiot level when responding. I don't know a lot about the command line, etc. But I have had a chance to poke around in DSL, so I do know that the control panel is, etc. And I did try configuring the card through those interfaces, both with the NDIS (on the Linksys card) and with the wireless config interface for the Netgear. Once I solve the PC Card issue, I was able to go through the config process with that interface. But it wouldn't connect me to the internet. And in the Network Config interface, it doesn't see the wifi card (is it supposed to?). TIA, KS Posted by Winter Knight on April 28 2007,16:47
I don't know much about those other cards, but my Netgear 511T works out of the box for me. When it's plugged in, DSL loads the driver on boot. I still use DSL 3.0.1, but I don't think that would change in later versions.
If the card is detected and the driver is loaded, yes. Posted by whittycat on May 03 2007,12:52
It doesn't work oob for me. I tried both the iwconfig and wlanconfig GUIs and it won't connect. The PCMCIA entry in the Display panel reports that there is an Atheros card in the slot and there is an Atheros driver ath_hal in lsmod. The command iwconfig atho says all the right things and it does everything except connect. The led on the card doesn't blink so it's not trying. In the MyDSL repo there is a new driver for Atheros cards that I might try but it's a .uci file; can someone tell me what I do with a .uci file?
Posted by Juanito on May 04 2007,09:24
Try this:$ mydsl-load /path-to-file/*.uci Posted by whittycat on May 04 2007,09:25
PS It may be a bit naive of Winter Knight to think that the version will not matter. My version is 3.3 . I tried it with Puppy Linux (highly recommended) and it asked me to load the atheros driver and the card worked as it should. I also tried DSL-N and this configured the card on boot without my doing anything. DSL-N uses the 2.6.12 kernel. So I am happy now, but not too happy that the Netgear WG511T is listed as a verified wireless card that works out of the box. That is misleading. Posted by Winter Knight on May 06 2007,05:31
What matters, from a driver perspective, is the kernel. DSL has been using the same kernel for as long as I can remember. 2.4.26. It isn't polite to say things like that about people who've been here awhile, Mr 1 post. However, sometimes little, seemingly benign changes do break stuff, that's why I said I "don't think" that would change.It's good that you eventually got your card to work. Maybe your PCMCIA card doesn't have good drivers for the 2.4 kernel? I know you got the Xircom card working, but sometimes faulty drivers can work for some uses and not others, or some cards and not others. At least, that's the only thing I can think of, since that card works fine for me (and others) out of the box, and you've tried so many PCMCIA cards that didn't work. You'll also notice that you will often experience problems with 2.4 kernels (like in DSL) that you won't in 2.6 kernels (like in almost every other distro under the sun). Posted by dcrowder32 on May 14 2007,17:33
I also cannot get Netgear WG511T to work in DSL 3.3. It works fine with Ubuntu, so it is not a hardware/bios issue.The PCMCIA tool from Control Panel identifies it as an Atheros card. I ran Wlanconfig from Control panel. I entered my sid and accepted the defaults (they look correct to me). It does not appear to be doing anything. The card has two lights that flash on/off alternating when it is trying to connect. Both light flash together on/off when connected. Now, the left light is on, the right one is off. Any ideas? Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on May 14 2007,18:21
Did you run netcardconfig after (or ifconfig/route/etc commands) to configure your connection?
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