Hello finegan,

since cardctl ident gave us something like this:

Product info: "PCMCIA", "11M WLAN CARD v2.5", "ISL37300P", "RevA"
manfid: 0x0274, 0x1612
function: 6 (network)

we put the following in hermes.conf

"Trendnet Wireless PC16 v2.5"
manfid 0x0274, 0x1612
bind "orinoco_cs"

The card behaved differently all of a suddenly.

The machine now gives up 2 beeps (good!)

We 'think' we have configured essid, channel, etc correctly but we are not sure

Currently we have the following:

1-XP machine with a PCMCIA wireless ethernet card (works great!)
2-RHAT linux 7.2 machine with PCMCIA wirless ethernet card (working crappily)

Interfaces on both machines have been given static IP addresses. When 2 is ejected and inserted then the two machines can ping one another (but only like 7 or 8 times) then the machines can't 'reach' each other.

Whenever i use commands like 'iwconfig eth0 essid on' or 'iwconfig blah blah' the two machines once again see each other but once again for only two or three beeps.

are we missing something?

Sorry about that big blank between replies...

Okay, I assumed there was going to be a wireless router involved, but you want to do pier-to-pier? Right now by default that card is going to start in managed mode, which means its scanning through all of the available channels looking for a master. If you assign it:

iwconfig eth0 mode ad-hoc

or, conversely, if its in ad-hoc by default, put it in managed

pier-to-pier is a bit of a hastle, but its just a matter of hitting the right combination.

It should open a cell and stick with it, which hopefully the XP machine will be able to hold with, if you also tell it to use ad-hoc. I've only configured XP crates for wireless LANs with managers and encryption, so I couldn't tell you what menu does what.

A few notes though:

iwconfig eth0 essid on

is assigning the card to a network named "on". Under XP there is a setting to give it the essid, or networkname. Make it the same on the two laptops. You might also want to set : iwconfig eth0 rate auto

That will let the card decide what transfer rate to use depending on distance and noise, which will cut down on packet loss, but shouldn't exactly help with this dropping after 8 pings problem.

Luck,

Finegan

We got it working. We were stumped as to why the pings were not continuous and only worked when we restarted the card (and only worked for a little while before being unresponsive)

We then realised there were two versions of ad-hoc
1. Demo adhoc (proprietary)
2. 802.11 adhoc (IBSS, i think)

We left linux box untouched (from our last message configuration)

We opened up the properties of TEW-PC16 using XP device manager and looked into advanced. There were many more options available here than using the 'little utility in the lower right hand corner of screen'. We changed mode to IBSS from adhoc and a couple of things happeded:
1. solid link light on card began blinking
2. little utility went from green (connected) to red (disconnected)
3. but PING rates were amazingly continuous and awesome!

thanks finegan......next question soon(we promise)