Cannot assign a MAC address
 

I have got a linksys WMP54G and I am trying to enable it using the command line.

I get an error message whenever I use

iwconfig wlan0 ap [my wireless card's MAC]

I have to do this on another machine as, obviously I have no internet access via linux. So appologies for the lack of copied and pasted terminal dialogues.

Any helpful suggestions please?

Has anyone else used this card with another distribution?

That doesn't assign a MAC to the card in your machine, that forces the card to authenticate with an access point with the given MAC. Is that what you want to do?

I'm a little backward with the terminology. Is the "access point" the network card in the machine, or the MAC of the router I am trying to connect to?

"access point" is what you are trying to connect to with your wireless device. In your case, the wireless router. Defining the MAC address is useful in environments where there are multiple wireless access points.

To change the MAC of the card in your machine, you would do something like this:

Replacing the MAC with whatever you wanted. Keep in mind that not all drivers support changing the MAC, however.

OK, thankyou very much for the replies. I have tried again, I have got as far as getting my card to detect some wireless networks when I scan, but I cannot get any further than that.

If anyone is successfully using a wmp54g with another distro, let me know, otherwise I'm going to have to leave this project alone for a little while.