proxim rangelan ds stopped working all of a sudden
 

I am using a Dell inspiron 600m with Suse 9.1 and a Proxim RangeLan DS for wireless. Everything worked fine for about six months. Then, all of a sudden, it stopped working. When I put the card in, the lights start to blink, indicating it's not getting a good connection. When I do a /etc/init.d/network restart, I get this message:
wlan0 device: "PROXIM", "RangeLAN-DS/LAN PC CARD", ""
wlan0 configuration: wlan-bus-pcmcia
wlanctl-ng: No such device
wlan0 Could not query device:
Setting up service network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I checked in YAST, and all my wireless settings were there, same as before, but now, of course, I have no wireless again. Is my card physically broken, or is something that I need to reset in the system?

Thanks!

Si

Do you have a different machine you could test the card with? Also, did you install or remove any software just before the card stopped working? Finally, plug the card in and have a look at the output of dmesg and see if there are any clues there.

Thanks so much for writing back. I don't have another laptop so there's nowhere for me to test it. I did verify that all the wireless configuration stuff was still correct in YaST. Dmesg was a great idea. Here is what I got from it when I plugged the card in:

prism2cs_init: prism2_cs.o: 0.2.1-pre20 Loaded
prism2cs_init: dev_info is: prism2_cs
prism2_cs: index 0x01: Vcc 3.3, irq 3, io 0x0100-0x013f
hfa384x_drvr_start: Initialize command failed.
hfa384x_drvr_start: Failed, result=8
prism2sta_ifstate: hfa384x_drvr_start() failed,result=8

If YaST is still configured correctly, does this mean the card has gone bad somehow? Or, what does this exactly mean?

Thanks!

Si

To be honest I don't have a good answer for you. I did some googling on the error messages, and from what I can tell, your not alone, but I didn't see any quick answers either. From what I can tell, it looks as if either all the modules are not loading properly or there is a firmware issue. From the googling I did, it looks as if this and this have the most comprehensive explanations out there.

I don't think you need to mess with the Yast configuration stuff. From what I've read, the problem is more fundamental than that. Did Suse pick up this card right away or did you install drivers for it?

It always just worked before. Now this sounds bad. Do you know if the newer versions of RHEL or Novell Linux Desktop support the Intel PC 2100 out of the box? Or, has anyone ever made
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/
work with Suse 9.1?

Si

If you do a search here on suse ipw2100, you'll find that quite a number of people have successfully installed ipw2100 on suse.