I am currently running RedHat 9.0 (2.4.20-8) on a Compaq Armada 7400 (Pentium II; this would be i686, correct?) laptop, and am desperately trying to get a wireless NIC to work.

I currently have a Linksys WPC11 v.2 NIC, and yes I have seen many setups for this card on the Net. Unfortunately, none of them seem to work for me. (I bought an SMC 2632W card today, but haven't had any luck with this one, either.)

Does anyone know a setup that absolutely will work for this card?

Also, does anyone have any recommendations on NICs that are natively supported; that is, where I don't have to jump through hoops to get them running?

I know I'm probably asking a lot here, but it's difficult to learn anything about Linux when I can't even get on the network without switching back to an MS OS.

I will greatly appreciate any help I can get on this.

Thanks!
David

Well, I can help butg I'd need some more info:
- is your pcmcia system recognised and up and running? (lspci and check if you can see the PC card controller)
- do a ps -ef | grep cardmgr to see if the pcmcia services are up
- do you have the pcmci package installed?

If all that is working we got something - you got an old laptop - I'm not even sure if the pcmci controller would be supported for that one.

IF that's up you need to figure out which chip you got in your card(s). The WPC11 V1 uses an intersil chip - drivers are on www.linux-wlan.com but you'll have to compile them yourself. I have no idea which chip is in the V2 version of the card. The SMC card uses the intersil chip as well.

Go take a look at http://www.practicallynetworked.com/...2632_linux.htm

Figure out whether you got pcmcia running ok, and figure out which chip you got (don't forget to check the small print on your cards - those might be helpful too!). Then try to compile the driver and check back here if you get stuck.

Goof luck

Tom

I have a Netgear MA401RA and it works just fine. Although, since you are running RedHat 9.0 you will have to jump through one or two small hoops.

I do know that many LQ members, myself included, have jumped through them and are happily using their wireless networks.

Good Luck

run this command to bring up the gui, yes i hate gui's but this one is helpful for this

redhat-config-network

tell it to add a new device
choose wireless
choose other wileless card
now selec this adapter

Lucent Orinoco and Prism II-based PCMCIA wireless

now choose your device like eth1 or eth2 and now click forward
now setup all your wireless info.

the linksys is almost the exact same as the orinoco drivers. I have a linkys pcmcia at home in my dell laptod running redhat 9

in answer to your question regarding "natively supported" wireless nic's: literally, the only wireless card I've ever plugged in and had working without any additional effort on my part was a version 1 d-link dwl-650 which I borrowed from a friend, it's the one with the axe-head looking antenna housing, out of 4 different cards, it worked immediately on a stock installation, you can still buy one on EBay, just make sure you see it first.

there are no doubt other older 802.11b cards that will work on easily on insertion, but I have no direct experience with them. this is not to say that after a bit of learning and effort many, many other cards will work nicely, just that the one card required no effort, and thus would be as close to "native" support as I have knowledge of.