Help Wireless Pci Card D-Link WNA-1330 on Gateway Solo 9100 Laptop
 

I have been trying to activate the aforementioned wireless card on an old laptop I recently aquired. The operating system on it is Xubuntu Edgy. I have attempted using both madwifi and Ndiswrapper, but the problem seems to be the system cant even find the the card. No lights are on and lspci gives no indication of its whereabouts. I know the pci slots work however as I am also using a usb pci adapter in the second slot.
lspci gives this output
walker@localhost:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 430TX - 82439TX MTXC (rev 01)
00:01.0 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 01)
00:01.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
00:01.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
00:01.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 01)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Chips and Technologies F65554 (rev c2)
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Cirrus Logic PD 6832 PCMCIA/CardBus Ctrlr (rev c1)
00:0a.1 CardBus bridge: Cirrus Logic PD 6832 PCMCIA/CardBus Ctrlr (rev c1)
01:00.0 USB Controller: OPTi Inc. 82C861 (rev 10)

Im stuck and have been working on this all weekend. If you need any other info from me please ask. I am really in need of help

Have a look at the manufactures documentation on the old laptop to see if this is a 16 bit PCMCIA card slot or a 32 bit slot. If it is 16 bit, ( a lot of the old ones are ) you are out of luck.

I have a Compaq 300Mhz model 1245 and it has a 16 bit PCMCIA bus. I use a an ethernet card that has a wired connection. Wireless cards that I tried couldn't be see in linux or win98.

I believe it is 32 bit here is the documentation.

Keyboard: 19 mm on center keys with 3 mm travel; Win95 keys; US, UK, German, French, Swedish. Japanese versions available. (International keyboards not available in US.)
External ports: Master and slave USB ports, Fast IR, serial (16550A-compatible), parallel (bi-directional, EPP, ECP), NTSC or PAL video in, NTSC or PAL video out, game/MIDI, PS/2 for keyboard or mouse, DC input, docking connector, PC Card Type III or two Type I or II card socket, VGA external monitor, Kensington lock slot
PC Card controller: Cirrus GD-6832 with Zoomed Video and 32-bit Cardbus support interfaced to the PCI bus
Pointing device: EZ PadTM touch pad

I think this is worth the effort. Your system has 32 bit support, and from D-Link, this is a card needing a type II pcmcia card slot.

I have not figured out what chip set this card has. D-link is of no help here. I do not see the card listed when you ran 'lspci'. so, no help there. I did find this thread.

http://www.geektimelinux.com/index.php?q=node/view/327

Have a look, this person got your card type going on Ubuntu. What isn't clear to me is the driver the user used. That is not described.

I could not find anything to suggest this card is supported by MadWiFi. I think your best shot is ndiswrapper.

Download the latest windoze driver for your card form D-link, and unpack all the files in one directory. Then try to load the latest windoze driver.

Have a look in a konsole as root to make sure there is only one driver loading. Two is a receipt for problems. The command 'lsmod' should show ndiswrapper only. I know you tried MadWiFi, so make sure there is nothing left loaded from that.

Hey there and thanks for the help so far.
Still, however, no luck after uninstalling both ndiswrapper and madwifi and reinstalling ndiswrap[per with the drivers from the cd that came with the card. lspci still does not show a card nor do the lights on the card come up. Perhaps it is a problem with the pcibus itself. I am uncertain what to try at this point.

Here is something interesting though. After ejecting and reinserting the card, dmesg gives this

[294.868191] cs: pcmcia_socket0: unable to apply power.
[295.540140] pccard: CardBus card inserted into slot 0

So it seems that though the card is detected it is not receiving power. Any opinions on how to remedy this would be appreciated.

It appears there are some know pcmcia card socket issues on some laptops with the 2.6 kernels. Here is a link I found describing the issue and some work arounds.

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/ke...powerbugs.html