Just about an hour ago, I was finally able to figure out what an ISO was and how to burn it to a CD. Sweet glory it felt like a touchdown when it worked.

I'm trying to switch from the world of Windows, and even then, I am a pure end user.

I read the thread about "what I need to include when asking for help", but frankly I didn't quite understand much of it!

So I am typing this from a Live CD running pcLinux OS with GNOME (is that important info?).

To get online, I had to plug my ethernet cable directly into my computer because my wireless card didn't work.

So that's why I am posting here.

The system doesn't even seem to notice that there is a card shoved into the card slot. I've removed it and re-shoved it... nothing.

It is an older Linksys Network PC card WPC11 ver.3

I purchased a new Notebook computer, so I am experimenting with Linux on this 8 yr old notebook: It's a Sony Vaio PCG-FXA53.
I will be thrilled if this old horse can be made to fly again!

OK, so I'm not quite sure where to go inside this linux interface to make things start popping. The command line world is totally foreign, but I see people referring to it all the time!

Yep, I'm another annoying total novice.

Any ideas on what I should do next?

Kelton

If you're totally new to things, try out some different distros, like Ubuntu or Knoppix. They have pretty good hardware databases built in, and your wireless might be supported right out of the box. You'll still be able to use Gnome or KDE, too.

Many of the distros out there have 'live' versions, such as Mandriva or OpenSuSE. Doesn't hurt to try them out, and see what happens.

Alot of the wireless problems depend on the chipset, whether or not you need firmware packages loaded, WEP vs. WPA supplicant, etc. The easiest thing is to try a different distro and see if it works. If not, get things loaded up, and (as root), run "dmesg -c"...this will clear out your dmesg log. Unplug and re-plug your wireless card, then run "dmesg" again, and you should just see messages that relate to that device. That will give us a better idea on what's going on.

Well, I'm running off a CD, so will running "dmesg -c as root" still work when going off the CD.

Once I get this thing to work, I want to do a full clean install.... but don't want to commit until I see that it will work.

Now, I'm not sure how to do the "dmesg -c" thing, so is this a command line thing?

The basic lingo is going to cripple me as a start!

Kelton

OK, I noticed the script icon and typed in the prompt...and something happened! Here is what I have:
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
pccard: PCMCIA card inserted into slot 1
pccard: card ejected from slot 1
pccard: PCMCIA card inserted into slot 1
[root@localhost guest]#

So at least I can see that computer is noticing something about the card.

Does that help? yet?

Kelton

To identify the wireless chipset you are using, open a terminal and type "lspci -v" (list pci devices). The wireless chipset should be near the end of the output. You may need to be root to run lspci, so if it doesn't run then type "su" or "su -c" first to become root on the live CD.
Once you have the name of the wireless chipset you can post it here and someone should be able to give you more specific advice. Try googling the chipset and linux or pclinux os, or search this forum or pclinuxos documentation for your wireless card.
Try Ubuntu live CD as well. They have built in support for a lot of wireless cards.

Thanks... I'll get right on that when I get back to the old computer.

Ubuntu sounds fine. I suppose I was hearing a lot of good things about pcLinuxOs and wanted to give it a go. Also, I am interested in the Digital Photography Edition of that distro which is motivating me to stick to this.

Here's what I am getting:

With "iwconfig"":
lo no wireless extensions

With "su cardctl ident":
su: user cardctl does not exist

With "lspci -v": I get lots of stuff, but I don't see anything about a wireless card.

I do see something about a "CardBus bridge: Texas INstuments PC11420 PC card Cardbus Controller. Subsystem: Sony Corp. Unknown Device 80f6"

Is this useless?

With lspci you should see something like:
Some google searching reveals you card uses the prism chipset and the orinoco driver, so it should work:
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_p...ndname=Linksys
Searching the Ubuntu wiki reveals that it should work out of the box:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ha...rkCardsLinksys
However, searching the Ubuntu forums reveals that at least some people have trouble getting it to work. This may be one of those cases where the same model card can have different chipsets. If it is at least seen with lspci in Ubuntu you should at least be able to get it to work with ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers.
The easiest thing I can suggest is try Ubuntu and see if it is detected.

Well, I downloaded Mint... I think it's called Xfce.

Everything seems to work perfect. The computer even sleeps appropriately as far as I can tell.

Yay! My first Linux success. It makes me feel like I have taken my first baby step off of the Microsoft/Apple treadmill!

Now, I'll need to figure out how to install this Mint instead of running it off the CD. I'd like to maintain a small, clean version of XP on one partition, though.

I've seen people talk about it, so I know it is do-able.

Thanks for the help!
Kelton

Here is a good resource for installing Ubuntu:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/
The Ubuntu installer can shrink your XP partition to the size you want. Defragment it first though. Remember that for XP you need at least 15% of that partition free for proper defragmenting, plus the swap file (aka virtual memory in Windows), plus whatever extra space you need.
You can then create 3 partitions for Ubuntu/Mint:
/ (root) about 10GB if you have the space
swap, 2X amount of RAM, up to 1GB, is plenty
/home the rest
Having a separate /home will allow you to keep your data separate from the OS so when you reinstall Ubuntu/Mint your data is safe.

Heh! I know the feeling.

You may never get that old WPC11 card working right, though. The experiences that people have had with the Broadcom chipset that Linksys uses have been awful. They just don't support Linux.

Seriously, your best option is to replace it as soon as you can with a card that has a compatable chipset (see the HLC - the Hardware Compatability List - from the top page of LinuxQuestions for more).

I've been using an older D-Link card with an Atheros chipset with great success for quite a while now.

Thanks,

Mint is going a bit better.

The wireless worked when I was running off of a CD. Given this, I went ahead and installed it. Now, no wireless!

Then, I plugged in the ethernet cable directly, and it worked fine as expected.

So I fooled around in the mysterious world of network setting, and now even the ethernet isn't working!

Unlike pcLinuxOs, Mint at least recognized my card and properly identified it when I ran those iwconfig commands in the terminal. This makes me feel like their *is* a solution.

Nevertheless, it is high time that I upgrade my wireless system anyway. The current system is probably 8 years old now. I'll need to take a look at the compatibility list so I can increase my chances on this issue.

It is pretty frustrating especially now that I see that this is a rampant problem. In fact, when people review various distros, they almost immediately refer to whether or not their wireless works out of the box or not.

Here is the compatibilty list for wireless cards for Ubuntu.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...CardsSupported

Beware that it is possible for some wireless cards with the same model number to have different chipsets. By a card from a place where you can return it if it don't work. Ralink, Atheros, and Intel wireless chipsets work well. There are others also. Check through that list.

Thanks!... I have booked marked it.

I found on Linksys website that they have Linux drivers for WPC11 PC cards. I havent tried it I am still learning what is wrong with my PC Card.