Belkin "Pre-n" F5D8000 network card
 

Hello,

I've recently purhcased a Belkin Pre-n dekstop network card (consists of the Pre-n PCMCIA card and a PCI CardBus adapter to put it in), and cannot get it working under Mandriva 2006.0 (2.6.12 kernel). I tried the .ini file on the supplied installation disk with ndiswrapper, but no joy, and haven't found any native driver either. The card is based on an Airgo MIMO chipset. lspci lists:

Anybody know how to get it working? It's the only network inteface I have for my desktop, as my modem is three rooms away, and I can't use my wired lan.

I'd love to get it running, it works awesome in WinXP. It replaced a Linksys 802.11g card (which, by the way, would probably work under linux if I installed it back again, but I don't want a network card and a 6 inch antennae both sticking out the back of my case, nor any conflicts that might arise as a result of having them both installed), and in Windows, I get 4 bars where I used to get 1 and connect at 108 MB where I used to get 25, so it's exponentially better. I've had linux running on my laptop for about 6 months, and I just finally got a chance to put it on my desktop next to XP, and this is the only hangup, so I'm hoping I can get it worked out and make a big move away from Windows for good.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Update already,

I downloaded the driver from the website, unpacked it, and transfered it from my laptop to my desktop, put it in a folder, and tried ndiswrapper again, and now it lists

driver present, hardware present

But when I go to modprobe ndiswrapper, I get an error:

FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found

And indeed, it is nowhere to be found in /lib/modules, or anywhere else that I can find. Not sure what that's about, but once (if?) I get it fixed, it just might work.

Another update:

Found out that ndiswrapper wasn't modprobing because I'm using the SMP kernel and it couldn't write the module for it. I uninstalled the .rpm and installed it from source, and modprobing works. BUT (always has to be one, doesn't there?), iwconfig shows no wireless extensions. dmesg output is:

Any ideas? That 04:00.0 corresponds to the lspci output for my card (refer to above post), and apparently it couldn't enable it, and probing it failed with error -16. I'd be eternally grateful to anybody who could help me get this working, if it's possible.

Not that I think anybody but me is actually reading this, but just for my amusement, I thought I post a thought I had:

ndiswrapper provides a Windows driver for the card only, the Airgo Ethernet Interface. My problem might be that I need a driver, or to pass a comment to the kernel or somesuch, for the CardBus adapter. That could explain why it couldn't enable the PCI device. In case anybody's reading this and can help me, again, I'd love you forever.

Clearly I'm the only person at all interested in this thread, but just in case it pops up on Google for some poor bastard in the same boat as me, I was right: it's the Ricoh PCI CardBus bridge causing the trouble. I did a little poking around and apparently I'm not the only person who can't get it (and a few other Ricoh models) running under linux. If I come up with a solution I'll post it up.

belkin wireless pre-n
 

Hi

I'm just starting to look at this under suse 10.0
Suse comes with ndiswrapper 1.2-2
I'm using the card inside my IBM thinkpad, so a little different to you

Downloaded the drivers from belkin website
copied the three files NetAni.inf , wni6000.bin, wnihdd51.sys to a directory called ~/belkin drivers

My card modprobes no problem
it also dmesg ok
it also locates the access point,
BUT (there it is again) it seems to do strange things to my keyboard, so setting my wep key is a bit of a challenge.

will report back in a mo, when I've checked out the latest version of ndiswrapper from sourceforge.

Mike C

I gave the card a shot in my Dell 500m laptop yesterday as well, and I got the driver loaded with ndiswrapper and modprobe'd just fine, but then everything would freeze, and when it tries to start the device from startup it causes a kernel panic. In the couple seconds between modprobing and freezing, I was able to type in "iwconfig" once, and it showed that the device was finding the access point and connecting to it just fine. Not quite sure what the problem is there. Thankfully my laptop also has built in wireless, so it's not completely without a network interface in linux like my desktop is.

belkin pre-n
 

What version are you using?

Downloaded 1.5 from source forge
now it will not modprobe , says "operation not permitted" even logged in as root.

hmm... LOL

looks like I have a mess of versions and links, as per this website on ndis problems,

http://www.angelfire.com/linux/hardwire/problems.html

will look at this later and clean out my system.

I used the .rpm version that came packaged with Mandriva, which is 1.2 as I recall. On my desktop I used the same, but I had to download it from sourceforge and compile it myself, since I'm using the SMP kernel. Between installs, you need to uninstall ndiswrapper and remove the directories and files associated with it (can't remember them off the top of my head, a search of your system should turn them up) in order for the new version to install and function properly. Despite my best efforts, I think I just simply will not be able to use this card under linux. I'm still trying, but it doesn't look real good. And it's only exacerbated by the fact that you and I seem to be the only two linux users on the planet who use this card.

This looks better
After cleaning out as per url above, and using version 1.5 of ndiswrapper
modprobe of ndiswrapper works.
both lights on the card are now on, with the transmitt light flashing
#iwconfig

shows the access point
no keyboard lockups

#iwlist wlan0
wlan0 Scan completed
shows my access point nicely


#iwconfig wlan0 essid accesspointname
goes through, the lan led goes out


#iwconfig wlan0 key restricted xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
goes through

#iwconfig wlan0
now shows Auto ESSID: "accesspointname"
blah blah
encryption key:xxxxxxxxxx security mode:restricted
blah blah

lan light is solid green, transmitt light is flashing



BUT (there it is again) no dhcp, will report back once I find out how to set the ip address up


:study:

I've just bought a Belkin Pre-N router and desktop network card and have been reading this thread with keen interest. Has anyone had any success in using the desktop card in Linux?

I still haven't been able to get the desktop card to work. It's got more to do with the Ricoh CardBus adapter included with the card than it does the Belkin/Airgo card though I think, so if you bought the notebook card separately and then bought a CardBus adapter separately, perhaps you could hit on a winning combination.

mchoy,

That's good news at least, huh? Maybe I'll give 1.5 a shot on my laptop later and see how it works. That's basically how it happened with me, except after the modprobe, the lights would come on, and a couple seconds later, I'd freeze up completely. Hopefully I'll have some success. I'm currently not using encryption, so I'll try it and see if it works for me, and if it does, you'll know it's probably got something to do with your encryption.

pre-n gig
 

I'm currently investigating hardwiring the ip addresses and dumping dhcp to see if it is just a dhcp thing. sadly I have to wait until the family go to bed so I can go and mess with the belkin router.

Just to summarise so far

1.5 loads nicely no lockups
associates with my access point
iwconfig scans find also
kinternet also finds access point on a scan
dhcpcd says it times out waiting for the dhcp server
I can load the driver automatically via yaST on boot, but association needs a manual kick


I feel that we are very close (but maybe its an illusion)

Mike C

Hey,

I just installed ndiswrapper 1.5 from source on my laptop, and was able to modprobe the driver just fine with no lockups as well (so apparently 1.5 knows something 1.2 doesn't). Finds the AP just fine, iwconfig shows my network and 100/100 link quality, but I can't connect using ifconfig or the graphical tools. I must be experiencing the same problem you are. You're right, it does feel like we're right on the cusp here. If the driver loads and the card can see the router, it seems like it must be a trivial matter to get them to connect to each other. Post any progress you have back here, and I'll do likewise. Later on I'm going to try ndiswrapper 1.5 on my desktop and see what happens, although I'm pretty much convinced the problem lies in my PCI bridge, since it won't even bring up the interface.

By the way, just thought I'd check dmesg to see what was what, and got this:

There's about 8 more miles of "ndiswrapper (NdisWriteErrorLogEntry:xxx):code: xxxxxxx" , but I don't think any more of it would be relevant, it's just more entries with different code numbers, and it won't all fit in one post. Not sure what that's all about. Do you get anything similar?