Rick Stevens wrote:
Jim Pelton wrote (reformatted for bottom posting):
On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 09:08, Ralph Angenendt wrote:
Javier Gonzalez wrote:
I desperately need a wlan adapter that will work in my Laptop. I have Fedora Core 1 install, and it seems to be better with wlan, but I have still found a card that it's relatively easy to install. I have tried Linksys Instant Wireless ver.3, and Netgear MA401. Netgear just doesn't do a damn thing for me.
The MA401 was recognized by Anaconda, so I cannot see, which problem you
might have there. Just worked out of the box, so to speak.
You need to modprobe the orinoco_cs and hermes modules for it to work - if your PCMCIA stuff is working.
Do you get any errors when you do that?
Ralph
Javier,
I have struggled a little with WLAN cards in my Powerbook (yes yes I
know diff, distro, but same idea). I found that many cards have
different chipsets, but are packaged under the same model (but with
different versions). It's important that you get a card with the Orinoco
PrismII chipset, because it's best supported under linux. There are
other drivers, for other chipsets, but it's hard (at least for a newbie
like I!) to compile them properly. So I would continue with the Linksys
v. 3 card. It's the one I use and it's great!
Now, check your /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia file. it's should read:
PCMCIA=yes
PCIC=yenta_socket
PCIC_OPTS=-f (i think!)
CORE_OPTS=
When you have changed this file, try restarting pcmcia services with
your card inserted. Now cardmgr should load and you should get two
similar beeps suggesting that cardmgr has recongnized the card as one
which has a driver installed on your system. (I think RH systems have
the orinoco_cs driver (for prismII) installed somewhere as default). Now you can run redhat-network-config and add the wireless device as
eth1 or whatever is appropriate.
One should also examine the ndiswrapper stuff at
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net. It allows you to use WXP/2K/2K3
drivers (the .inf and .sys files) under a wrapper driver. I use it
for my Broadcom BCM94306 802.11g wireless on my Fujitsu laptop.
Works fine.
This and the driverloader tool available from linuxant.com work similarly.
A bit OT, but be aware of some problems.
With the OS drivers, tools to monitor and control the adapter ( like kismet ) can work.
When using the windows specific drivers (regardless of what wrappers are used), the extra functionality/control is not available since the windows driver does not support it.
I received informatin from Broadcom that at present they have no plans to make their drivers open, so you are limited to whatever functionality they have deemed appropriate.
