Cabletron Roamabout DS wireless card

Forum: Networking
Topic: Cabletron Roamabout DS wireless card
started by: hawki

Posted by hawki on Sep. 20 2004,21:18

Ok I thought this should be easy. I looked in /etc/pcmcia/conf and found the card I bought. It loads orinoco_cs on boot but then fails to configure eth0. Are there entries in wireless.opt I need to update or add?
Are there other config files I need to update?

Thanks

Posted by ke4nt1 on Sep. 20 2004,21:22

What happens when you run wlcardconfig from the menu ?
Could it be listed as wlan0, and not eth0 ?

73
ke4nt

Posted by hawki on Sep. 20 2004,21:37

Hi
It tells me that no wireless card is found. Yet cardctl sees it fine and lsmod shows the orinoco module loaded.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Sep. 20 2004,21:40

Does iwconfig show the card?
Does ifconfig show the card as having an IP address ?
Are you running with DHCP serving your network ?

73
ke4nt

Posted by hawki on Sep. 20 2004,22:03

iwconfig and ifconfig don't see it. After a little more looking around dmesg shows an error. It looks like the module is failing to initialize the firmware.

eth0: failed to initialize firmware (err=-19)

Maybe the card has an old firmware version that doesn't operate with this module.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Sep. 20 2004,22:31

OK, lets start from the beginning...

1. What brand/model card is this..
2. Is your network serving DHCP, or do you manually assign an IP
3. What is your connection point (router, firewall, cablemodem)
4. What kind of computer ?
5. Do you have another network connection on this box
( ethernet hardwired, modem, wired pcmcia )

Does dmesg show a repeat the error if you type
" modprobe orinoco_cs "
Also try looking thru these links ...
Some of these scripts, you can substitute orinoco_cs for prism2_cs

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....=prism2 >
< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....=prism2 >

73
ke4nt

Posted by hawki on Sep. 21 2004,14:44

Ok. It really should have been as easy as I thought. I moved the card to another laptop almost identical to the one I was using. I booted DSL 8.1.1 and it loaded everything like magic. I'm using it now. I'm not aware of anything being wrong with the first system but who knows. The card is an Enterasys Roamabout DS. A cardctl info shows it as a Cabletron RoamAbout 802.11 DS. It's great when stuff works like it is supposed to.

Thanks for the suggestions. They did help me eliminate some possible problems.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Sep. 21 2004,14:57

I had a similar instance here recently..
In trying to use a particular wireless card, it just wouldn't go..
I know I had things setup correctly..
This was in an older Compaq Presario laptop..

I placed the same card in an IBM laptop, same speed , same vintage..

Same setup.. Worked like a champ...

This card was a "cardbus" card, not your standard "pcmcia"
I wonder now if the Compaq doesn't support "cardbus" , but
the IBM pcmcia slots do...

73
ke4nt

Posted by hawki on Sep. 21 2004,20:21

These are almost identical Compaq Armada's. The first is a 7370dmt and the second is a 7350mt. About the only differences are display 1024x768 vs 800x600 and processor speed. I just went into there screwball diag/setup and told it to reset to factory defaults. Now they both work. Go figrrrr. A lot of work for something that should have worked out of the box. Oh well. The good news is it works.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Sep. 21 2004,21:11

OK, I'll try a factory reset on mine as well, and see if that helps..

Thanks

73
ke4nt