For all of you with the misfortune of getting telephone and DSL service from Qwest the trick to getting your Belkin wireless card to work without jumping through any resolve file hoops is to turn off DHCP. Your Qwest IP address which is handled by the router is transparent to your computer. The router issues static addresses to your computers so there is no reason to use DHCP. It just adds a layer of complexity. Let me tell you up front that I am a total newbie, but I got this to work so I wanted to share this. I amazed myself with my techncial virtuosity!!!
Here is how to do it (This assumes you know how to use the console and you can login as root).
1. Install Ndiswrapper. Follow the directions that came with it in the install file.
2. Find a belkin driver that works on your computer. for me it was bcmw15.inf and bcmw15.sys. I had to try several before I found one that worked. I don't know if you need both files but you defintely need the .inf file. A self-installing windows driver will not work. You must have the inf file and thats not easy to find. I found mine at Dell Computers.
3. Enter ndiswrapper -1 bcmw15.inf (you have to include directories unless, like me you simplified your life by putting it all in one directory in root's home)
4. There should be a message that the driver was installed. You can check by typing ndiswrapper -l.
5.
This is important: Type the command "modprobe ndiswrapper"
I don't know what that does but it is essential.
6. You can confirm that you have things working by typing "iwconfig" and your wlan card should be present.
7. You can confirm it works by "telnet 192.168.0.1" (the default address for the Actiontec piece of junk). The user logon is "admin" and the password is "admin." Don't mess around in there or you could screw up your router (just "exit"). You could also ping but I have never been able to figure out how to stop it!
8. Go to the network card setup in YAST, select your wlan card, and select "edit." Add your Qwest host IP addreses. Unless your host names IP address is correct, you will be able to talk to the actiontec all day, but won't be able to connect to the internet. This is the thing that appears to confuse most people here in the forums.
USE STATIC IP or the host name will be overwritten with the actiontec address in your resolve file everytime you restart! Plus its less overhead for your computer.
8. Finally don't be stupid like me and think it didn't work if Firefox doesn't bring something up. I spent hours trying to figure out what was wrong before I realized that Firefox comes set to "work offline" by default after installation!!!! Talk about making sure the cord is plugged in!
9. As soom as you know it works
get out of Root!! In SUSE 10.1 the wlan card and the internet will be available for all users. I tried using SU to this procedure but ndiswrapper did not installl or work properly unless I was root.
The only problem with this is that I have to "modprobe ndiswrapper" everytine I restart the computer. An inconvenience but it works. I suspect that I have to have the driver file in a specific directory but of course I have no clue where it should go. If anyone knows how to fix this I would be very grateful.
P.S. Please do everything you can to boycott and prevent sales of Belkin products (even at work where, like me, you may be using Windows). I personnally have prevented several hundred Belkin sales. This is the only way we will get vendors to cooperate with LINUX by providing drivers. I will never buy another Belkin product!!
