I have a Netgear WG-511 which uses the Prism chipset, apparently one of the better supported chipsets. I just installed Fedora Core 4 today, and when I plug in the card I get a strange problem. The card just won't turn on! That is, the LEDs stay dark.

"lspci" shows the card. "ifconfig -a" shows "eth1" is there, but the MAC address given is wrong (well, it is different from what Windows reports, and the card works fine under Windows).

Here's the programs I tried and their output:

iwconfig --> NOT READY!: ESSID:off/any
ifconfig eth1 up --> SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory
ifup eth1 --> Error for wireless request "Set bit rate" (8B20): SET failed on device eth1: Input/output error

Through all these commands, not the tiniest twinkle from my pcmcia card. No "beeps" either indicating that it was configured.

The prism54 module *IS* in the kernel (I insmodded it at one point, not sure if it got loaded on its own).

So, what causes this? Why won't the card turn on?

Oops, found it myself. The driver couldn't find the firmware image, so I downloaded it, now things work great! Hooray!