Exhilarating, isn't it?

Just think, all this fun from just getting a piece of unsupported hardware to work with LInux that anyone running windows would have had working in like 5 minutes and 2 reboots, this is why I love Linux, windows is just no challenge .

But seriously, I'm truly glad to hear you kept at it and got it working, and I really appreciate you posting back to let us know. You using pre4? What firmware did you end up with? Oh, and if you're using pre4, are you having any problems with using "channel X" in your iwconfig calls? How about suspend/resume, any problems with that and this module?

I downloaded the (now there are 2...) Slack91 iso's a while back, but need to make room somewhere on some machine to check it out, thanks for the info it does sound good, funny though, I really have no complaints with slack90 it's rather snappy, and it all fit on one cd. Then there's Mandrake 9.2, which apparently is going to require me to get involved in BitTorrent. No iso's otherwise, even for us "club-members" although I guess they'll show up somewhere eventually. Did you use the BitTorrent thing for Slack9.1? if so, how was it?

wait, so the DWL-650+ works in slackware9.1 using acx100 driver? cause im having the same problem with 9.0

Hi Beavis,

I am trying to set up the ACX100 Driver for Red Hat Linux 9.0 using your HOWTO and ran into the same problem that highartboi ran into. i.e. even if I set mode to Managed, it stays in Ad-Hoc mode. Unfortunately, highartboi got it working by unplugging the wired ethernet. In my case, eth0 is not active. I tried your suggestion of modifying acx100_helper.c wlandev->mode = 0x2. But that hasn't helped. EXPERIMENTAL_VER_0_3 is still set to 0. I noticed that when I down the interface (ifconfig wlan0 down) mode changes to Managed but as soon as I bring it up mode changes back to Ad-Hoc. So when I try to set the route, I get Network is unreachable. /var/log/messages show mainly TIMEOUT messages.

Details: using pre2 version: DI520+ with DI614+ (Access Point).

Do you have any suggestions? Please help.

Thanks In Advance.

You're saying you modified that source file, did a make clean, then make all, then copied the new module to your /lib/modules/.../kernel/... directory, ran depmod -a, cardctl eject, rmmod acx100_pci, cardctl insert and it *still* defaults to ad-hoc? I'm guessing somehow the original unmodified module is still getting loaded instead of the modified version. The hotplug system does not seem to unload modules on a device eject yet, so it would still be there unless you rmmod it yourself, and if the old is still inserted the new won't be.

If all of the above was done and still you're stuck in ad-hoc, I would suggest trying the firmware from the install cd, there are 3 possible files that normally come w/that card, AIRPLUS.BIN, APLUSMX.BIN and APLUSGEN.BIN, start with the aplusgen.bin file, then if that doesn't work try the airplus.bin and lastly try the aplusmx.bin. Copy it to the run-time firmware directory named in your /etc/modules.conf options line, rename it to WLANGEN.BIN and eject the card, rmmod acx100_pci, then insert the card. The log shows what firmware version it's using, see if it's any different, I have a fair amount of email from people saying the firmware from the howto works with their dwl-650+ and dwl-520+ cards so this may not be the problem.

You can also try changing the order of things, although this seems to be something that afflicts the pci cards and not the cardbus models. What I mean is try doing all iwconfig stuff with the card not having an ip address, and vice-versa.

hey henry, I got the card working in slack9.1 but lately, when I have tried setting the channel, my kernel panics, I have no clue why and was wondering what would cause it because it has been working fine for a while now. But ya, it works, sometimes. I think this has been a known problem, what do you think akabeavis?

A few people on the sourceforge forum for this project have reported the channel thing for the the dwl-650+ and the pre3 and later versions of the module. I would either stop setting the channel (which is ok, because you should still be able to connect based on essid alone) or drop back to pre2. I've also seen the "stuck in ad-hoc mode" problem over there a few times, still no real answer has been forthcoming. I have personally modified the source as I outlined above and tested it, (I was able to reproduce that problem by setting the experimental flag) and the card comes up in managed mode by default that way and operates properly

ps: is this an smp thing? can you check your /boot/config file for "CONFIG_SMP" and see if it's set? the readme says smp is still problematic.

oh ok, thanks, im reinstalling it to 9.1 now...after trying to get the iso image of 9.1, found like 4 sites and 3 of them have corrupted iso images....wasted 4 CD-R before im smart enough to use CDRW...lol, i'll see if i can get it working, thanks for telling me ^_^

Hi, I'm im slackware 9.1 now, im getting this error when i tried to ping my router:
root@labtop:/etc/rc.d# ping 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 192.168.1.65 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.65 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.65 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable

and my eth1 looks like:
eth1 v0.2.0pre4 ESSID:"linksys"
Mode:Managed Channel:3 Access Point: 00:06:25:9A:B8:FA
Bit Rate=22Mb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm
Encryption keyff
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:42/100 Noise level:0/100
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

i think its my essid, i don't know what i should put in there, so i just put linksys cuz i have linksys router, can someone help me?

wait, nvm i just put it to any, now i can access my router,but somehow it says unkown host when i tried to ping www.google.com or www.yahoo.com, guess its stuck in lan...
when i change my nameserver to my gateway address, it says network is unreachable
do anyone know who to get out of there?

edit: responding to post that happend whilst I was typing:

henry, add this line to the top of /etc/resolv.conf:
nameserver 192.168.1.1

but it still says:

root@labtop:~# ping www.google.com
connect: Network is unreachable

what does route say?

you can also get this error if encryption is set on the router but not on your card

you can also get this error if MAC filtering is set on the router and your card is not on the list, does it work in windows?

Hi Beavis,

To clarify a few points:

I am facing the problem with PCI card DWL-520+ (even though I used this DWL-650+ thread bcos the symptoms faced are very similar to what "highartboi" faced). So hotplug is not in the picture. I used both depmod / modprobe (your method) as well as insmod (start_net script) with the same results.

I copied the firmware from the install CD to begin with and DID NOT use the firmware from your download section.

Per your sugestion, I tried changing the order. As long as I don't assign the IP address, the mode stays as Managed. As soon as I assign the IP address, it changes to Ad-Hoc mode automatically. The log also shows "invalid regulatory domain" error. Do these suggest anything?

hmm, it says:
localnet * 225.225.225.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
loopback * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo

I don't have my MAC filtering on, and it is a DWL-650+ wireless card, router = linksys
and i don't have a labtop with windows on it, but last time i checked with SMC wireless card when this labtop have windows, it works.

henry, I need to see all these things:
ifconfig -a
iwconfig
cat /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 (if you've made any changes to it
cat /etc/rc.d/rc.netdevice (if this file exists)
or first you can try this: route add 192.168.1.0 eth1, then route add default gw 192.168.1.1 eth1

ganeshr,
can I see iwconfig, ifconfig and either the line you use to manually load the module or the relevant lines from /etc/modules.conf, and the contents of the firmware_dir= directory you're passing to insmod?