Linux Newbie trying to enable 3com wifi card
 

So I've got a Sony PCG-SR17K that I refurbed and I'm giving Linux a try for the first time.

A trusty friend recommended Mandrake 10, so I've gone with a dual boot setup of win 2k and Mandrake 10.

What's currently evading me is how to setup my 3Com 3CRSHPW196 WiFi card. A little web searching tells me the atmelwlandriver from sourceforge will do the trick. But I've got no clue how to do that install in Mandrake.

Out of curiousity, I tried booting the system with the WiFi card installed instead of the CD-Rom. (the wifi card wasn't plugged in when I installed mandrake originally becasue I've got one pcmcia slot on this ultra portable, and it was filled by the external cd rom drive that I used to do the install)

so, when I boot with the 3com card in the slot, it goes through some pretty impressive auto detect / configure / and is all set to grab the install package, but it then wants to look to the cd which I can't get to because I'm already using my only pcmcia slot for the 3com card. So I copied CD 1 over to my HD, but now I have no idea how to tell mandrake to look to the HD for the install packages.

For all I know, the drivers that are on the Mandrake distribution are the same Atmel ones that I grabbed off sourceforge.

So can a newbie get some help here? Either some pointers on installing those atmel drivers, or help with telling mandrake to look to the HD for the install packages.

Thanks in advance
-Ethan

hupjack; turn to the howto`s. @
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX
hardware section - wireless- wifi subsection then expand for indepth info.
open all those section& subsections 4
complete detailed info on howto.

thanks.. that's definitely the type of resource I need to read to catch up to speed. I'd also love to know how to tell mandrake to look to the hard disk for those install packages. It looked like it could do a great job of auto confiuring things if I could get it to have the 3com card installed and look to the hard driver for the drivers.

thanks,
Ethan

hupjack; question? does ur laptop have a usb port? if it does then via usb thru hub adding additional devices is an option u have to increase # of devices u`ll have. providing system bios permits it. check that
first then go with usb hub. this site will guide u with usb. : http://www.linux-usb.org/sections.html

The laptop does have USB.. I can plug in a linksys WUSB11 if need be. In having suggested this, are you saying that it's not easy or impossible to tell mandrake to look to my hard drive instead of the cd for the install files?

-Ethan

hupjack; if indeed mdk is installed on hdd
answer is Yes. unless u only did partial install of all u would need. then u will have to use cd.

partial install. Are you suggesting that during install I have the ability to install the drivers for the wifi card even though the mandrake installation doesn't have a prayer of autodetecting the device (since it can't be in the taken PCMCIA slot)?

hupjack; No unless device comes with drivers other wise they are from os. device mfg may have drives available for linux but u have visit their site to download then install in ur machine.
recommending taking time to read some howtos http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX scroll to sections pertaining to ur devices & open(expand) for complete detailed information & guidance.