I have a new core duo laptop with the intel pro/wireless 3945abg card but cannot get it to work. A lot of forums talk about installing the driver, but it appears that with SuSE 10.1 this is already the case, as lsmod is showing:

ieee80211 32968 1 ipw3945
ieee80211_crypt 9728 1 ieee80211

Looking at dmesg, I have found the following problem but cannot find a solution...

<6>ipw3945: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection
<3>ipw3945: ipw3945.ucode load failed: Reason -2
<3>ipw3945: Could not read microcode: -2
<4>ipw3945: probe of 0000:02:00.0 failed with error -2

A forum for ubuntu mentions it here (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=837922), with the user saying that upgrading udev resolved it. I have the latest version of udev.

Can anyone help me with this. My wired connection isn't long enough and I don't like sitting in my hallway

hi i had a same problem for fedora... but i have made it work ...
I have written a small procedure , u can follow the steps for suse10 and see if it works...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=436357

Thanks Garfield! With information from your post I was able to solve the problem and get my wireless to work, however at the moment I have to run the wireless daemon manually.
It seems that SuSE 10.1 (RC1) does come with the drivers however they are incomplete. The following instructions get it to work.

1. Install ipw3945d (I installed version ipw3945d-1.7.18-1.at.i386.rpm)
2. Install ipw3945-ucode (I installed 1.13-1.at.noarch.rpm)

Please be aware that I got this working using the NetworkManager that comes with SuSE 10.1. I assume it will still work with the normal ifup method.

If I ever get the daemon running automatically, I'll post here to close this problem completely.

Just for future reference for you there is an add on cd that is around 375 meg. It is d/l from the same page as the other 5 just below it. It contains all the intel centrino wireless drivers.. JRE 1.4 and 1.5 as well as amarok, acrobat reader 7.0. Interfacing it through konqueror you can use yast to automatically install any of these rpms plus many more i havent mentioned. Hope this helps. Its a lot easier than doing a manuel config.

Getting this wireless card to work seems to involve updating firmware. Does this stop it working with Windows?

I've not updated any firmware since i bought the laptop about 2-3 weeks ago. Works fine in windows and linux using the methods mentioned in this thread.

Updating the firmware of any hardware component should never affect it's ability to operate normally in another OS. Updating firmware just adds more necessary features to the hardware. It should not matter if you update the firmware within one operating system or the other.

You are not updating the firmware on the wireless card. It's actually being downloaded to the card everytime the driver is loaded, and it "disappears" when you power off you're pc. The same applies in windows.

So it only updates RAM on the card? I saw references to firmware updates on various forums and assumed it was updating flash memory. I am very wary of firmware updates since the CD drive problems with Mandrake 9.0(?).
Thanks for clearing that up.

I was assuming you referenced the microcode when talking about firmware. If this is the case, then yes, it gets loaded to the card everytime the driver is loaded. I don't think there is any firmware update available for the card. Is there?

Note that if you use different firmware between the two operating systems, you may experience erratic behavior. (Example, OEM firmware versus old Prism54 firmware).

If you use the OEM firmware for both Linux and XP for example however, you shouldn't have any problems.

I'm currently trying to get wifi working with suse 10.1 (addon-cd is still downloading).

And I was wondering what steps it takes to get it working properly, for a newbie to follow

I tried following the steps mentioned earlier in the topic by garfield1228 with the rpms installed as mentioned by rioch

But when I get to checking if everything works, I don't get a good result for:

dmesg | grep ipw <- this should list the driver detected.

Anyone with a clue what goes wrong here?

Perhaps worth mentioning that I'm installing on a dell inspiron 6400

It works!

Installing Suse 10.1 with the addon cd (ipw firmware and daemon) did the trick

me == happy again

Thanks a lot! Just got a new T60 from Lenovo and was starting to get pretty irritated that the wireless would not work. Didn;t even have to install ipw3945-ucode, just ipw3945d and it connected to my home LAN.

Cheers. Now let's takle the ATI issue