3com Wireless PCMCIA Card setup with Mandriva help please where to start?
 

Hey all

I am new new new to Mandriva and linux and have an old Toshiba Tecra laptop that has a 3com wireless PCMCIA card installed that worked on MS XP, however I wanted to try something different.

Everything seems to be up and running on the laptop, and Mandriva has found the hardware on installation, however I am not sure where to go from here to activate the card and or set it up.

I know that there is an large amount of information on this and however I have spent a long time looking (Probably in the wrong places) and have reached the point where I need to ask to find the answer.

if someone can point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.

If your card was detected at install time, then open up MCC ( Mandriva Control Center ), go to Networking and Internet. There are several gui tools there to help you out.

Networking Center will list card(s) detected and that have drivers loaded. For wireless cards you need some information about your wireless access point. You need to know if your using DHCP or you are going to assign a static IP address. Either can work. I use a static IP address since I also run servers on the device, and I want to know what the IP address is for the device. Encryption is another item to know. This depends on the access points setup. Keys have to match. If you are using no encryption, understand the world can see everything you are doing.

If you use 'Automatic settings', the access point should send all the addresses your system needs to work, it will assign an IP address, give you the gateway address, give you DNS addresses etc. It you use static, you need to look at the access point, and manually enter the addresses. ( once only ).

If the card is not showing up in the Network Center, I would suspect either the wrong driver, or no driver is loaded. Look in MCC --> Networking and Internet and see what you have. If the card shows, it could be called something like 'ath0' then try to configure it. You can activate it with a button, and that is it... If it doesn't show up, then post back what you find. You will need the root password to access MCC functions.

Thanks for all that information, I have been through MCC and had a look at hardware install and networking configurations.

The card shows up on all accounts so thats a good start, however when I try and run the configuration tool I end up with an error.

I have installed Mandriva 2009.1 offcial release and how do I install the required above component?

Thanks again for your help

There is a package in the Non-free repository for you. It is called amtel-firmware.

Open up MCC, and go to Software Management and then Configure Media Sources. Look to see if you have "Mirror List Non Free" and "Mirror List Non-free Updates". There should be a check mark beside each one for Enabled. If those two are not there, you need to add them with Easy URPMI. Go here -->http://mandrivausers.org/easyurpmi/index.php

I like the old interface, there is a button to select it. Enter the correct version and arch for your system. Mark the two repos you need. I did this, and it generated the following lines.

Open a konsole and as root run each command, one at a time. That will add the repos if you do not have them already.

Once the repos are added, go to install software, and search on amtel. The package should show up. Install it as you would any other package.

Note, the two repos I selected are for 2009.1 and i586 ( 32 bit system ). I sisn't take the time to pick a close to me repo, so do it for yourself, and select a mirror that is close to you.