I know there are many many posts on this topic, but unfortunately I can't get far enough in the loading and recognizing of my wireless pcmcia card, linksys wpc54g, for these posts to be of any help.

The problem is in that none of the drivers I've tried, - all of which I've seen as working for various users using the wpc54g - are allowing ndiswrapper to recognize my card. I even downloaded the latest windows xp drivers from linksys which also do not work for me.

I have linux mandrake 2.6.3-7mdk i686

the model number on the card is WPC54G

These are the drivers I've tried with ndiswrapper:
bcmwl5
lsbcmnds (current driver from linksys)
wlipnds

ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 hardware NOT present
lsbcmnds hardware NOT present
wlipnds hardware NOT present

lspci -v
...snip...
unknown : Broadcom Corporation|BCM94306 802.11g NIC [NETWORK_OTHER] (vendor:14e4 device:4320 subv:1737 subd:4320)


so I can't even get the card to be recognized at all with these drivers. I recently had debian on before switching to mandrake and ndiswrapper worked great with the lsbcmnds driver - but mandrake is having one heck of a time. Anyway, I hope some of you could offer me some advice...

I am really not too sure, but there appears to be 2 phases

phase 1: detection of the card itself (i.e. the power lcd)
phase 2 : the actually detection of wireless

If you haven been messing with the kernel, then phase one should be alright.... (see if your card can has the "power" light on)

for phase 2 when installing ndiswrapper try the wlipnds.inf file


I have also read that you should use the drivers with the CD as opposed to that download (not sure if there will be a diff - I use those that came on the cd)


Hope this helps

thanks for your reply:

You'd think I could download those drivers from somewhere...do you have it (the inf and any associated files needed)?

I'll try the cd tomorrow - I hope we still have it at work. The only messing I did with the kernal was upgrading it, and that seems to have gone without any problems. I'm still having the same issue with the drivers though. The cd is at work, so I'll grab it there and see if those drivers make a difference. I've tried the one you mentioned and also tried two others none of which allow ndiswrapper to recognize the hardware....this is pretty frustrating because I switched from debian to mandrake because of more experience on mandrake and the card worked like a charm on debian with one of the drivers I listed above...but no luck with that in Mandrake...

the kernel will work fine =D

until you realise some things are not working lol.
currently I lost my usb hotplugging .... trying to find out which option it was that screwed it ;p

in case your power led is not lighting up you need to enable pcmcia support....

either compiled into kernel (which will detect on boot) or compile as modules, but then you will need to load it....

I don't have the drivers with me.... but I can email it to you later if you want (later being after work.. about 7 - 8 hrs from now... )

I'm using the same wireless card. Use the driver off the cd that came with the card. Browse the CD. Theres 2 files on it called lstinds. You want the file that is named LSTINDS in capitals.

Well, I don't know how, but the card is now working - and I don't know which driver it's using because:

ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 hardware NOT present
lsbcmnds hardware NOT present
wlipnds hardware NOT present

You can see that ndiswrapper is saying hardware not present for all of them. cardctl is outputting more information now then it has before:

cardctl ident
Socket 0:
no product info available
Socket 1:
product info: "Broadcom", "802.11b CardBus", "8.0"
manfid: 0x02d0, 0x0406
function: 6 (network)

cardctl info
PRODID_1=""
PRODID_2=""
PRODID_3=""
PRODID_4=""
MANFID=0000,0000
FUNCID=255
PRODID_1="Broadcom"
PRODID_2="802.11b CardBus"
PRODID_3="8.0"
PRODID_4=""
MANFID=02d0,0406
FUNCID=6

iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"" Nickname:"new-host-5"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437GHz Access Point: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
Bit Rate=54Mb/s Tx-Power:17 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:E3D7-2180-9824-B34E-12B0-6131-3D Security mode:restricted
Power Managementff
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-10 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:7189 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.

(wlan0 is not setup now cause I'm at work, but the card is there and wlan0 is loaded)

I did find one other post about someone experiencing the same thing...no resolution to that though. Now I'm afraid to change something in fear that I might break whatever is working...lol...I think I'll still try the driver on the cd and see if I can get something more informative from ndiswrapper -l. I'll keep this post going and then post my steps so others can benefit...