Hi,

I have an old PII which I use in a wireless network (linksys router). I had installed on the machine Mandrake 9.1 and I used a Sitecom wl-012 USB card to connect to the network.

The Sitecom card has an prism2 chipset and Sitecom shows on their site that it can be used with linux, they point you to the wlan-ng site.

In the beginning I had problems with getting it working but with a later package from the wlan-ng site and recompilation of the kernel (as instructed on that site) I got it working.
The only problem I had was that the USB device now and then would hang itself and I had to disconnect/reconnect it and make a new connection.

As the new linux kernel has more wireless capability I wanted to try the new Mandrake 10 (club edition) to see if the problem of the hanging would be solved. This version also has support of the prism2_usb driver and I installed the wlan-ng packet from the distribution.

BUT IT IS NOT WORKING, if i try to figure out what happens and I use 'dmesg' I see there are USB errors when I try connecting the network adapter. (error 22).

I tried knoppix 3.3 on the same machine and could get the card working with no problem.

- What is the cause of this USB error ?
- Is it better not yet to use the Mandrake 10 Club edition, but maybe 9.2 instead ??

thnx

de error message when i look with dmesg

bootsplash: status on console 5 changed to on
usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using address 4
drivers/usb/core/config.c: invalid interface number (1/1)
usb 1-1: can't read configurations, error -22
usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using address 5
drivers/usb/core/config.c: invalid interface number (1/1)
usb 1-1: can't read configurations, error -22

Hey,

I had some problems too with this type of card, however under a two different "tastes" of linux, fedora core 1 and slackware 9.1.

After becoming real mad, I found out that the firmware these cards are supplied with usually is too old and it would help updating the firmware.

All files needed can be found at: linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/.

I used the windows box for updating the firmware.

Follow the Window-based flashing step by step with the firmware 1.7.4.

After updating the firmware, the card will be recognized and you will need to follow the wlan-ng steps for installation.

RemkIO

Hello,

Please tell my the kernel directory in Mandrake 10, I am a newbie...
For my wl-012 installation.

Thanks

You have to install the source package first, then you will find the source in directory as described by sitecom

As I have posted this problem in this BB and a Dutch BB I will describe my findings uptill now

- The new kernel (2.6.x) is a problem for this card as the interface is not correct for the more strict USB definition in 2.6.x

- De update of the firmware of the card I haven't tried yet

- the use of the standard 2.4.x kernel in Mandrake 10 has the result that he finds the card but it is very unstable and not working correct. I still have to recompile with the source

I got Sitecom WL-012 to work under Linux kernel 2.6.52, even though having the same problem at the beginning (error 22 and whatnot) !

What you need to do is to fetch firmware updates:
po010102.hex and su010506.hex
from http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/firmware/1.5.6/

and to flash it to the card (I used Windows box and utility http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-pri...date-0-7-0.exe)

After that, I followed the instructions from Sitecom:
http://www.sitecom.com/faq_showanswer.php?faqid=282

to install latest wlan-ng driver at the moment (2004-06-07): ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-w....1pre21.tar.gz

The card is now working just fine...
good luck,
vvserb

My Mandrake 10 distribution comes with a kernel 2.6.3 instead of the 2.6.5 you describe I don't know if this is a problem ?

Sorry, the setup I was talking about was kernel 2.6.4-52 (not 2.6.52 as I've said by mistake) and wireless card sitecom WL-012!
However, my guess is that the kernel is not the problem, but the broken USB implementation within original firware which comes with the card.
Kernel 2.6.XX implements USB interface in a more strict way, and that's probably why the card works with kernel 2.4.XX and doesn't work with a kernel 2.6.XX.
I think that firware update will do as described, but unfortunately I am not an expert; I just posted here how I did it, as attempt to maybe save someone few hours
cheerio,
vvserb

p.s. The card with new firmware still works fine with Windows XP too!

@vvserb

Thanx! it worked, I upgrade the firmware on a windows box as you suggested and when i connected the card on mandrake 10 with kernel 2.6.3 it was recognized as a prims usb card. I also installed the prism2 rpm (wlan-ng) from Mandrake 10 and could get the wifi working in the shell with some commands.

I have it not yet working automaticly by reboot

Mandrake control centre recognizes a wlan0 but gives it the name of my USB hub and not from the card.

Just a quick question: once the firmware is updated, do you still need to disconnect and reconnect the card for it to be detected under Mandrake? On my Gentoo box I have made a script to start my wireless lan on boot, but on the Mandrake box I can't, because I have to disconnect the usb cable and plug it in again for Mandrake to recognize the card.

When I used the card on mandrake 9.1 without the firmware upgrade I had to disconnect/connect the card.

With Mandarke 10 the card is recognized and is connected during start up.
I configured it with Mandrake control centre, but that didn't work completely. I had to change the wlan.conf and make a if-wlan-cfg...

I also installed the seperate prism-rpm!

Hi there,

Its an old post, but I had the same problem using the Suse 9.0 pro distro. Done as suggested by vvserb : firmware update. But now my wl-012 card doesn't seem to receive packages any more. Well, that is, every now and then the wl-012 card receives a packet. The card has a good connection with the base-station. The problem is in Suse 9.0 pro and in Windows XP, the card shows the same behavior.

What can it be ??

@mrblack53

I'm not familiar with Suse but the fact that the card also doesn't work on Windows XP sounds not good.

To get it working on Mandrake I had to install also the package from wlan-ng!

@Sipan

Suse 9.0 pro has support for prism2_usb chipset, an older version of wlan-ng. I installed wlan-ng-2.1-pre20 (and pre21) and could not get it to work. When I looked in the message log, I saw a lot of error messages when I connected the card.

After the firmware update, I don't get a lot of error messages, actually, I get none. So suse knows about the card and loads de drivers. But then it takes a long time to get an ip-number via DHCP. Eventually I get an ip-number, but that's all I get. Transmitting is no problem, receiving that is what goes wrong I think. When I check with ifconfig, the Rx counter for wlan0 increases very slow, when normally the count goes a lot faster. And it shows the same thing under Windows XP.

The card has a good connection with the accesspoint, so that is not the problem either.

Well, I keep searching and hoping that it all ends well.

Regards,

mrblack53