Prism 3/ DWL-520 E1

Forum: Networking
Topic: Prism 3/ DWL-520 E1
started by: zmef420

Posted by zmef420 on Jan. 02 2005,02:39

Hi everyone.

From what I have read < here > and a few other spots I am still confused. Can DSL be used with this pci card? You have to build the kernel module?

I am going to give it a crack tonight, any help would be much appreciated.

Posted by replies to myself on Jan. 12 2005,05:01

i am going to keep this topic alive because this is a awesome chipset. anyone wanna help me out. is compiling the kernel hard? can i use the dsl source? do i have to know all my hardware or can i just add what i need?

sometimes when i make or install or what have you, the c compiler can't be found (tcc right). simple things to experienced users.

thanks

Posted by ke4nt1 on Jan. 12 2005,05:30

If I'm reading your link correctly, it has a prism chipset.

Most all prisms have been working fine in DSL without any extra drivers
or making a new kernel.

Search thru the forums for "prism" , and see what you find.
DWL-520's are pretty common..

73
ke4nt

Posted by zmef420 on Jan. 13 2005,00:58

i'm not that noobish, brother!

thanks for the reply, ke4nt1. yeah, it is a common card, but it has several revisions. the "e1" version, which i have, has a prism 3 chipset. problem is the firmware is loaded when its booted by windows. in order to use it you have to compile the kernel with HostAP and the dlink drivers, i think. maybe there is another way, i haven't found it.

Posted by green on Jan. 13 2005,02:22

Can you do an ndiswrapper with it?

Posted by ke4nt1 on Jan. 13 2005,02:42

My apologies..

Initially scanning the document , and recognizing the dwl-520 chipset name,
I thought you were in hog heaven! Lots of 520's in service in DSL!

But after seeing your response, and 'reading' the document..
I understand your challenge.

There is the kernelsources.dsl for the /usr/local/src you'll need.
and the gcc1.dsl, although I have better success by simply apt-getting
gcc, g++, and make from the unstable repository.
That should remove any (tcc) issues.

73
ke4nt

Posted by zmef420 on Jan. 13 2005,03:13

nope. tried ndis. the chip doesn't have firmware so it's you can't load a driver with out firmware, i guess.
i thought the kernel dsl would come in handy

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 13 2005,04:52

I'm too lazy to read all of the docs, but could this work:

1) Boot up into MSWindows and firmware gets loaded.
2) Insert DSL CD into tray and close.
3) Exit Windows with "Restart" instead of "Shutdown"

Maybe then the firmware will still be loaded up if you do a warm reboot instead of a cold boot.

If this is true you could also configure a dual-boot setup on the hard drive, but you would need to briefly boot up Windows and restart every time that you wanted to use Linux.

Posted by zmef420 on Jan. 14 2005,04:43

i am gonna try it right now...

nope didn't work. good idear though.

im going to try to run dsl in windows and see what happens. probably won't work on this old p2 233 with 32 megs o'ram.
we'll see

Posted by zmef420 on Jan. 15 2005,02:10

well, running embedded inside windows doesn't work fo me. not enough ram or cpu. i went ahead and tried building the kernel. i got all the files, but when i try to build the hostap-driver module i get the message "can't build kernel with non 2.6 source? do i ave to run DSL .8 to use the kernel dsl? I'm lost.

might just have to get another pci card, but i hate to be a quiter. won't learn a dang thing that way.

Posted by zmef420 on Jan. 16 2005,04:49

Ok, I am not quite bright enough to load the drivers myself, but I dl a copy of Kanotix BHX, another version of Knoppix, because on their forum < (here) > i found out a script was written specificaly for it. After fiddling with it for a while i got it to work.

Maybe it could be included in the panel or something in the next ver of DSL? i gotta ask john.

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 16 2005,06:30

Could you post your modified script here?
It might help someone out before it gets included into DSL, if ever.

Including credit for the author, of course.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Jan. 16 2005,08:46

WoW! Great !!

Please share!

Good work!

73
ke4nt

Posted by zmef420 on Jan. 17 2005,02:08

i'm sorry yall, i misrepresented myself a little, i got the card to work with Kanotix BHX live cd, not DSL. it uses a more advanced hardware detection than regular knoppix. you have to let the HostAP drivers detect it and you also need the wireless tools. BHX also has a 2.6 kernel and i don't think DSL does, that might make a difference, i dunno. You also need two pieces of firmware.

my bad