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melberg · 01-12-2005, 05:34 PM

Being a linux newbie, it was a bit daunting to attempt to configure this card under FC2 since it was not natively recognized and didn't automatically install...

It comes with no linux drivers or support from NETGEAR, a perusal of their website and an email from their customer support re-confirmed.

But using the sourceforge.net acx100/111 drivers and "Craig's Instructions", I downloaded the tarball, added the necessary 'development' packages to compile, uncompressed the downloaded file, make'd it, installed it, etc. Once you generate the binaries and they are installed, you have to hand-edit the start_net script to enter your channel number and some IP information. WEP is not supported at this time.

It WILL work just fine after doing the tweaking necessary. After each re-boot, I run the start_net script from the acx100*/scripts directory, I haven't yet hooked up the script to autorun on boot...

p.s. (this may be obvious?) I updated my kernel and had to go through the whole unzip, remake, reinstall and script editing from scratch again to get the card supported. In the end, its really not all that hard, but it is manual.

gootz · 01-13-2005, 11:23 AM

I got this card working with the ndiswrapper tool. Just install the Windows XP drivers, then the card will (hopefully appear) as wlan0.
After each restart you have to modprobe ndiswrapper to activate the card.

eduardomsilva · 02-16-2005, 07:17 PM

I just want to say that I had a very strange problem when I have installed this wireless card, using ndiswrapper....

I tried the ndiswrapper version 0.8... and it just gave me a very strange error... the win driver just worked perfectly, but the card was not well detected!

With me this just worked with a more recent version of ndiswrapper (0.12)... so don't spent your time trying to install it with a old version of ndiswrapper... (I tried it because I was having a problem with the most recent version...).

But now... everything is working perfectly, and I am quite happy with this network card!

rjkfsm · 04-04-2005, 07:20 PM

Used dselect to obtain ndiswrapper and got WinXP drivers from NetGear site.

su -
<password>
ndiswrapper -i /path/to/inf/file
modprobe ndiswrapper
iwconfig wlan0 channel x
iwconfig wlan0 essid NETGEAR

connected? Type ndiswrapper -m

If you used a NIC to download software, feel free to disable or remove and use ifconfig to uninstall or just edit your /etc/network/interfaces file

Done

Spiney · 04-24-2005, 10:51 PM

I used the acx100 driver (http://acx100.sourceforge.net/) It works, but it fills up dmesg with all sorts of error messages. Plus, I've been getting random crashes lately and I suspect it's the wireless card and/or drivers.

All in all, I would not recommend this card. From what I hear, it's much better to get a card with the Prism54 chipset.

-------
Update
-------
Last time my machine crashed, I restarted it without running the start_net script for the acx100 driver. Now it has been up for 3.5 days with no problem. Max uptime before was ~8 hours.

Maybe I'll try ndiswrapper to see if that will fix things.

fouldsy · 07-11-2005, 05:16 PM

As the initial review stated, the acx100 drivers and howto from http://www.houseofcraig.net/acx100_howto.php work very well. There still seems confusion about this v2 card - some work fine using the ndiswrapper, otherwise need updating and running using the acx100 drivers.
The ndiswrapper method is by the far the easiest, but if you have no deivce listed (and I've done this before with other cards so know I did it right), try the acx100 drivers and instructions.
Once up and running it works fine. The latest drivers DO provide WEP support now, but you must also update the firmware when using the acx100 drivers.

Took 30-40 mins to try (and fail!) with ndiswrapper and get the acx100 drivers going, so not too bad. Much prefered MA401 PCMCIA card in laptop - came straight up, but there's plenty of coverage on this card out there on the net, so one of the two main methods should get you up and running.

maroonbaboon · 07-31-2005, 11:19 PM

Yikes! There is now a version 3 (incompatible with v2) on the Netgear website:

http://kbserver.netgear.com/products/WG311.asp

Maybe again only distinguished by a microscopic 'v3' on the packaging?

I downloaded the manual but there is no indication of the hardware used. Even Google fails. If anyone reading has one of these perhaps they could supply some details. Have Netgear dumped the Texas Instruments wifi chip?

kevin_hill54 · 08-08-2005, 06:11 AM

The new version 3 shows as a Marvell Technology device but I have nt at this stage been able to make it work.

I have also tried it in a XP box and it could see the router DG 834g but the router could not see the WG311v3.

Cant rate this but i'm sure there is a better card to buy.

I will report if I can make it work.

grayparker · 10-21-2005, 08:57 PM

I have tried both ndiswrapper and the acx driver using Craigs instructions. With either I was able to get a connection after some struggle, but it was never stable and was getting worse. It seemed like I was never able to control the card.

-Ryan