Wireless USB Lan Device
 

I recently purchased a TopCom Xplorer 3500 Wireless USB Card for my WinXP system. Now that I also have a Mandrake Linux 9.1 System set up (I'm a Linux-newbie, note), I want to use it there. But I can't. The system won't recognise the hardware (at least, I can't see it in HardDrake).

I have 4 USB ports and I don't know which one the device is plugged into. The TopCom company doesn't create Linux drivers, so I'm kinda screwed. And I looked at "linux-wlan.org". That didn't seem the least compatible with Mandrake (all that stuff about compiling kernels, I have no clue).

Could anyone help? I'm forced to live in this Win32-dominated hell-hole and I can't take it anymore! Spare me!

Try usbview (if installed - if not, just grab it from the CDs), it'll show you what's connected to where. But...(after a quick google on obscure websites) I've not got much more to say.

Your best bet is to discover what chipset the card is using (prism etc - check the manuals / docs) and start from there, if it's a pretty generic chipset you might be ok, there are drivers out for most.

Links that might be useful...

http://nocat.net - dig through the site, lots of info.
http://bawug.org