moin zusammen!
hello everyone!

I have a problem with my Netgear WG111 usb device (not the "v2"-Version). According to everything I read the device is compatible with the prism54 driver, which is included in my suse 9.2 distro. I installed the firmware modprobe'd the prism54 module but I don't see any wlan device (wlan0). What ist missing?

lsmod | grep prism54 gives
prism54 57500 0
firmware_class 13952 2 bttv,prism54

dmesg | grep prism54 gives
Loaded prism54 driver, version 1.2

so the driver is loaded I guess...

I've tried the firmware files from prism54.org as well (put them in both /lib/firmware and /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware

My old MA111 11Mbit usb device could be installed via YaST choosing the prism2_usb modul. An option to connect a wlan0 device to the prism54 driver seems to missing...

any idea?
thanks a lot to everyone!

Maybe its not called wlan0? If you run iwconfig after installing the card, does it see any card with wireless extensions?

No, iwconfig doesn't see any wireless card. It just gives the message "no wireless extensions".
Is there a special driver for usb devices? Is prism54usb part of the "normal" prism54 driver?

I'm not so sure that prism54usb is part of the normal prism54 project. After doing a bit of googling, it appears that this page is the definitive source on prism54usb and may help. Otherwise it looks as if a lot of people have resorted to ndiswrapper with this card.

Yeah, I know that page already. That's why I asked, whether prism54usb is part of prism54.
I even tried ndiswrapper before, but I ran into the problem that my system stucks. Has something to do with with the kernel stack size or so... I hoped to find a solution without patching and compiling to much...

Well, the honest truth is that wireless and Linux can be a difficult match due to the lack of support from the hardware vendors. And when it comes to the USB dongles, the problems get worse. So I think you have a choice here:

1) Follow the instructions on the Prism54usb page and install those drivers

or

2) Find a Suse kernel that doesn't have the 4K stack problem (or compile your own) and then run ndiswrapper.

<rant>
By the way, I didn't realize that Suse has now followed Red Hat's completely brain-dead and wireless-hostile approach to kernels. The ndiswrapper team is stuck because the Windows drivers (over which they have no control) can't live with 4K stacks. Both Suse and Red Hat should know that a huge slice of their users can only use ndiswrapper and they shouldn't go out of their way to make life more difficult. At very least they should provide kernels that don't have this problem.
</rant>

...or I can buy a pci card that works under linux.

However I plan to have a look at the new opensuse distro in the next days. And of course install the prism54usb as described (needed kernel 2.6.10 to compile, I have 2.6.8 running right now).

thanks so far...

...just to let you people know, my usb device is running now! The solution was to install Suse 10.0 and using ndiswrapper (Version 1.2-2) with the driver version 2.1 downloaded from netgear.com.

maybe this will help someone

Congrats and thanks for posting your solution. I'm absolutely certain that someone else will find this useful.

Hi!

Your solution almost solved my problem, too. ALMOST.

ndiswrapper -l gives
netwg111 invalid driver!
I guess I ´did install the wrong file. I read aomewhere to install the netwg111.inf but that doesn't seem to work.

I did everything like you, Suse 10.0, driver version 2.1 from netgear.com, installed with ndiswrapper. so i guess i just picked the wrong file. If you could help me saying which one to use I don't have to try all the files which came with wg111_2_1.zip

Thanks,
Tentacle

PS: Please forgive me my stupid questions, I'm a Linux newbee...

that is the zip-file I used. It contains a directory "WG111_SW1.2Beta13". I used the 4 files

netwg111.cat (size 7926)
netwg111.inf (size 8138)
wg111_9x.sys (size 381248)
wg111nd5.sys (size 379488)
out of this directory, not the files in the "ndis5" subdirectory (haven't tried them...).

to install the driver I did the following:
unzip the 4 files
ndiswrapper -i netwg111.inf
ndiswrapper -m

ndiswrapper -l gave
Installed ndis drivers:
netwg111 driver present, hardware present

modprobe ndiswrapper ==> the usb device started

The configuration will be done within YaST. Add a wireless network card and use "ndiswrapper" as modul (don't check the USB box). On the following pages you have to setup your wireless network.

hope this will help you. Good luck!