Getting PCMCIA Wireless to work

Forum: Laptops
Topic: Getting PCMCIA Wireless to work
started by: OgI

Posted by OgI on Sep. 25 2004,10:03

Dsl boots just fine and all, except that when loading pcmcia it states that it cannot find "pcmf502r3" -- googling on the net found that that was the module to make my pcmcia wireless card working. is there any way of getting this module into dsl? like for example a MyDSL package which gives additional modules? i need to get the wireless card working to be able to acces my files, any hints?

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Sep. 25 2004,17:18

try forcing the prism2 wireless driver. it works with almost everything.

Posted by OgI on Sep. 25 2004,18:41

but its an atmel chipset, not a prism chipset. its a 3com pcmcia wireless card, and i know its not compatible with a prism chipset (not sure about prism2 though).

but saying that, how do you force a hardware device to use a particular module?

Posted by litdie on Oct. 09 2004,06:44

well i have a copy of o'reilly's linux unwired and this is what it says on atmel.

"Atmel was the first to market a USB 802.11b chipset. However, that chipset did not include a radio, so various radios can be used with this chipset, including the Intersil Prism II radios. Linksys and D-Link both sell USB radio adapters based on the Intersil chipset. SMC and 3Com both sell PCMCIA cards using the Atmel chipset."

i have absolutely no idea what that means.

gimme a model number and stuff and i can try to find out more.

also i noticed atmel.conf file, in /etc/pcmcia/atmel.conf

maybe that can help ya out.

Posted by Ghost_runner on Oct. 22 2004,17:50

type dmsg, see if it comes up with something stating manfid i.e.

unsupported card in slot one manfid 0x52c0,0x7300

if so, then you can bind the card to the orinoco drivers by editing your /etc/pcmcia/config file

Posted by thingamajig on Feb. 19 2005,16:36

hi,

I wondered whether this problem has been resolved and if so how.

So far I've been gobsmacked by dsl in all aspects, but that wlan card with the atmel chipset is still doing me in:(

Posted by tempestuous on Feb. 21 2005,01:52

There are various "families" of linux wireless drivers, and some chipsets will work with several different drivers.
The best reference I have found for Linux wireless drivers is the webpage of a prominent developer, Jean Tourrilhes.
At www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Linux.Wireless.drivers.802.11b.html#Atmel it seems to indicate that the only driver for your chip is Atmel's own driver.
You can get the source code via < http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/news.html > but of course you would then need to compile this driver in Debian or Knoppix.
Easier to restore DSL's dpkg structure (see DSL's documentation or search forums) and install atmelwlandriver with apt-get or dpkg -i. I found a deb file at < http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/debian/pool/main/a/atmelwlandriver/ > but you may be able to find a more recent version by googling around.

Posted by tempestuous on Feb. 22 2005,12:36

I just found an older post regarding the Atmel chip - < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....;t=3904 >
It seems that the atmelwlandriver was included with older versions of DSL. Because newer versions of DSL have an updated kernel, the question remains whether this older driver will work in the newer versions.