alrighty, so i installed rh 8.0 and everything went fine except for the broadband adapter. it doesn't know what module to use, and i haven't been able to fine anything on the web. if anyone has any info on how to get it to work, i really appriciate it.

I just want to reply to say that I have the same problem. I was dumb enough to buy a Microsoft product for my laptop. And then I tried installing Suse 8.1 and there I was...stuck without a linux driver for my notebook adapter.

Can anyone share some insight with this problem? Could it be that Microsoft has their driver algorithm copyright protected so it can no be replicated on linux legally? Or is it that no one has actually replicated the algorithm for their cards and it is just a matter of time before someone unlocks it?

Any insight into this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Nic

Under sourceforge.net is a section for the linux pcmcia drivers - and nobody there knows how to do it as yet. In principle, an existing driver may work with it, but somebody would have figure it out. So far us MN-120 owners are out of luck.

i don't know much about pcmcia broadband cards, but i would guess the former, after all, it is microsoft we are talking about

This card is based on a Tulip chip and all it takes
to get it working is to add the PCI ID to the tulip driver.
At least it worked for me, YMMV.

Thanks. .. how does one do that? Are you talking about a recompile of the tulip driver, or just entering information into the config file? Please be explicit for those less experienced.

This involves editing the driver source code and recompiling the driver.

First use lspci to get the PCI ID of the card. With my card the ID looks pretty bogus (ffff:0001).

# lspci -vn
...
04:00.0 Class 0200: ffff:0001 (rev 11)
Subsystem: 1414:0001
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
I/O ports at 4800 [size=256]
Memory at 10c00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
Expansion ROM at 10800000 [size=128K]
Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2

Then edit the tulip driver and add the PCI ID to the list of supported devices.

cd /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/tulip
vi tulip_core.c
around line line 230, add the PCI ID (0xffff, 0x0001 in my case)

{ 0x14f1, 0x1803, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, CONEXANT },
/* Microsoft MN-120 */
{ 0xffff, 0x0001, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, COMET },
{ } /* terminate list */

The chip seems to be (or compatible to) the ADMtek 985
COMET, so i've choosen that one. I have no idea if there exist multiple card revisions.

Actually, i've used the current driver version (1.1.18) from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tulip/ as it was easier
to compile separately. It should work with the kernel version
as well (untested).

Finally you need to compile the driver (no idea how to do that on RH) and install the new tulip.o module.

Hope this helps
Michael

does anyone know how to compile a driver with RH 7.2? i'm a noob to linux and would like to get online with it.

well i found my answer (as is often the case with linux) I went to :www.justlinux.com and found everything i needed.

Hi there,

I have a Dell SmartStep 200N:

http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems...cs.htm#1084976

and have just recently installed Mandrake 9.1. I have the same problem getting the MN-120 to work but when I go into the KDE Control Center under PCMCIA devices it says that "no devices" were found. Does anyone know what I should do from here?

PS I am an ultra-noob with this and would greatly appreciate it if someone could explain this to me like I'm a small child. If I can get this working I promise to spread the good word about Linux being for everybody.

Any help is appreciated.

I should also mention that this laptop has an onboard Realtek RTL8139 which does not work and this is why I bought the MN-120.

Mandrake recognizes the RTL8139 as the ethernet controller. I'm not sure if I'll have to make some changes to this to get it to work but I figured I should mention it. Here is some info I found regarding the SmartStep PCMCIA controller if it helps:

PC Card

PCMCIA controller
TI PCI 1520

PC Card connector
two (supports two Type I or Type II cards or one Type III card)

Cards supported
3.3 V and 5 V

PC Card connector size
68 pins

Data width (maximum)
PCMCIA 16 bits
CardBus 32 bits