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Topic: Wifi Card Woes

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kingsinger Offline

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Posts: 1
Joined: April 2007

Posted: 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

Winter Knight Offline

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Joined: April 2006

Posted: 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.

Quote

And in the Network Config interface, it doesn't see the wifi card (is it supposed to?).

If the card is detected and the driver is loaded, yes.

whittycat

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Posts: 10
Joined: April 2007

Posted: 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?

Juanito

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Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: May 04 2007,09:24

Try this:

$ mydsl-load /path-to-file/*.uci

whittycat

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Joined: April 2007

Posted: 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.

7 replies since April 19 2007,00:36

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