Cardbus card is not recognized (vendor 0xffff)

I'm not sure exactly how you installed your module, but I just installed the new card (trendnet-223pc) which is an admtek 802.11b pci card and it's now working with slack9, some of this I'm sure you already know and/or have already done, but I'm going to list the steps I took to get the card working in the order they occurred and perhaps you'll see something in there that will help you. For this exercise I had a separate console tailing the log, in this case it was /var/log/syslog, for rh /var/log/messages would be better. Needless to say I logged in (vs just su'ing) as root for this.

1. downloaded/compiled the 1.0.5 source from admtek's downloads area.
2. copied 8211.o, ADM_Prv.o, adm8201.o to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net
3. ran depmod -a
4. ran modprobe 8211, not much happens in the log, lsmod shows 8211 inserted
5. ran ifconfig xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx eth1 (wired card is eth0) immediately the log shows a long series of 'set channel x' messages, and finally settles on 8, which is what my router's (an SMC 2404) using.
6. ran iwconfig with no params, output shows card is in infrastrucure mode ("mode managed")and is already associated w/router's correct MAC address
7 ran iwconfig eth1 key xxxxxxxxx, checked it again and the correct key was displayed.
8 went to ping router, nothing, forgot to add new card's MAC address to MAC filter list on the router, did that from another box.
9. now the ping works, but seems laggy, ran iwconfig eth1 rate auto, now ping is about right.
added another line to /etc/resolv.conf like this: 'nameserver router', which works because the router is listed in /etc/hosts
10. added routing info for the router's subnet (route add net) and to make it the default gateway of the interface (route add default gw)
11. Jacked the txpower way up (iwconfig txpower 40), signal is 100% and does not fluctuate, unlike the cards I use in my notebooks.
12. added an alias eth1 8211 line and a post-install 8211 line to /etc/modules.conf which links to a startup script that runs the 'iwconfig key rate' cmd so the card is functional on boot, the post-install line is a temporary thing (I think) until I find where slack9 wants to see those vars, rh uses /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 for this(for pci cards, anyway), you can set your iwconfig vars there as well as the others.

hope this will help

Thank you very much, akaBeaVis!

Here is what I needed:
1. Creation of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 (configured for DHCP)
2. ifconfig eth1 up

But this was a minor problem compared to the first problem with PCI bus!

Finally I am able to use Wi-Fi under Linux!

BTW, what about signal strength/quality with your Trendnet card? Mine is not very good, sometimes it works very unreliably, losing connection all the time, signal strength is jumping from 100% to 20% or even 5%. It is very hard to get signal at all if there are at least 2 walls between me and AP... What about you? What can be done with it?

Mine is in my daughters machine, which is on the floor one story above where the router is located up high in a kitchen cabinet. She has reported her connection going and coming in windows 98, in slackware I have not seen this. Try playing with the rate and txpower a bit, you also may have something inadvertently set on the router that is not good for the card. "iwconfig eth1 rate auto" seemed to fix my card, it's a trendnet tew-223pi. (there, I finally got the model number right)

Thought you might like to know that others have the same problems with the Trendnet card. Mine works in a Dell Latitude laptop under Win2000 just fine, and refuses to work under Redhat 9. I went to the Trendnet web site and found an rpm package that works under Redhat 8 but not 9. Being somewhat of a masochist, I loaded 8 on my laptop, used the provided rpm, and voila! It worked!

Now I was proud of myself and decided to do an upgrade to Redhat 9, which should drag along the code I had just installed. Right. Not only did the card cease to work, the internal ethernet port ceased to be recognized. I reinstalled Redhat 9 and am now thinking about what to do. I am not a Linux expert, but the source code for the rpm is available at Trendnet and it could be compiled under 9, but I don't know enough about linux to do that. I have a couple of friends who are developers who may take the time to help me.

Yes, I have the same experience. The Trendnet 221PC card simply isn't recognized. I guess this doesn't help much, but I heard somewhere that misery loves company....

ronaldo
I downloaded and looked at the source code provided by trendware. This is the same source available directly from ADMtek which I used to compile my modules, so I assume it will work with your card and a stock rh9 install.

These are the steps to take to download/install my rh9 module for this card:
1. from a console type "su" to become root and give the password (no chars will echo) if you are already root, disregard.
2. cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/pcmcia
3. wget http://www.houseofcraig.net/8211-2.4.20-8.tar.gz
4. tar zxf 8211-2.4.20-8.tar.gz
5. rm -f 8211-2.4.20-8.tar.gz
5. depmod -a (unresolved symbols are "normal" for this module)
6. cardctl eject (if error, keep going)
7. rmmod 8211 (if error, keep going)
8. cardctl insert, listen for beeps
9. ifconfig -a (if it shows your device keep going)
10 iwconfig (if it shows your device keep going)
9. try redhat-config-network, if it fails, we'll do it the hard way

if any of the above cmds can't be found do which cmd to see it's location and use the full path, ie: which tar = /bin/tar, then use /bin/tar, instead of just tar. If you actually log in as root (vs an su), you won't need to do this.

EDIT:
of course the above method requires you to have a working internet connection on the box outside of the wireless connection, so disregard if that's not the case...and may I just say: doh!

Hey, this is really great! I will try this tonight and see if I can get it to work. The instructions from the Trendnet web site required me to have the Redhat 9 source code loaded, and I'm not entirely sure I have enough memory for that (I've been putting it off for that reason).

Yes, eth0 works, and I can use it to perform your procedure. I just hate being tethered, especially when my laptop works just fine under Windows 2000.

Thanks again. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Best regards,

Ronaldo

akaBeaVis,

Tried your instructions and one of the lights lights on the card, but not the link light. Tried numerous ways to activate the card, and the best I got was "card does not appear to be available". Still works under Win2k, just won't work under Linux. I think I'm gonna need some personal one on one help on this thing, and I don't know enough to tell you what I'm doing wrong. The GUI netconfig of RedHat 9 seems to work right on another card, but when I attempt to activate it, I get the same "card does not appear to be available" message. Damn. Thanks for trying.

Link LED doesn't light on my card either, but Activity LED is flashing. However, the card sees access points and connects to them flawlessly (after a few weeks of configuration :-))

Even funnier is that without a link light, when I check activity on the card I find that thousands of packets have been transmitted and received. Yet I have no evident ethernet connection (can't ping any nodes, DNS not set up, nada). Wireless on Linux really isn't ready for prime time...

ronaldo, you're almost there.

All that's left now is to test the device and then configure this interface. There is some complication due this being the second ethernet device in the machine, for testing purposes what we need to do is take the first one down, and then bring this one up. here are the steps to test, I'm assuming here that the card is inserted, and that the one light is on:

0. login as root, ie: if you're not already root, logout of the windowing environment using the item on the menu, and then login as root.
1. Open a console/terminal, If you know the eth-name of the wired interface (*not* the wireless one), do "ifconfig eth-name down", the wired device is most likely eth0, try that first. If you're not sure, take a look at /etc/modules.conf, there should be an "alias eth0 modulename" line there, if the modulename on that line is not 8211, then eth0 is the one we want to take down.
2. do "ifconfig -a" and you should now have 2 interfaces, "lo" and the wireless one which may now be eth0 or may have remained eth1, it will most likely not have an ip address at this time, ie: no "inet addr", we'll use eth1 as it's name here.
3. do "ifconfig eth1 10.0.0.1", this will be a very temporary ip address, if you get some error here, stop and post back, if you don't get an error, rejoice, your device is functional.
4. do ifconfig with no parameters and see if the inet addr of eth1 is 10.0.0.1.
5. do iwconfig no params just to verify that wireless extensions are working, should return some info on eth1, details not important, if eth1 has "no wireless extensions by it", stop and post back.
6. do iwconfig eth1 mode managed rate 11M essid name key xxxxxxxx
7. do iwconfig no params and see if the info is right
8. do dhclient eth1
9. when it finishes you'll get an error or the prompt back, now do ifconfig, see if the inet addr is no longer 10.0.0.1, but something valid for your network, most likely something like 192.168.x.x.
10. do route and see if your router's ip address is showing up as a gateway.
11. do ping -c 4 <ip address of your router>
12. do ping -c 4 cnet.com
13. testing complete, the device is verified functional

remember, I'm using "eth1" as your wireless device's name, if you rs is eth0, use that instead in all commands *after* #1.

post back and we'll do the permanent configuration stuff.

akaBeaVis,
Well, I finally tried all of the suggestions end-to-end, but no go. When I do the dhclient it cycles through all of the channels but does not come up with a valid response from the WiFi access port. I used the RH9 Network GUI to check the essid, it was ok, I have no password to restrict access (no one within miles of me, so no security concerns), so that wasn't it; still only one light. Couldn't ping anything, but that stands to reason since dhcp did not configure. Any other ideas?

You know what? dhclient doesn't work on those cards for me either, it says "eth0 not found", and yet eth0 is there and if I assign the ip address manually, the card works no problem. I don't use dhcp on my network here, since it consists of only 7 computers, 2 routers, and a printserver, but I thought I'd try dhclient with this chipset and that's what happened. This is on a Slackware 9.0 box. What did dhclient say when you invoked it on your redhat 9 machine?

I'm curious, last time I ran redhat 9's network config tool, it presented me a list of module names to pick from to assign to the device, of course, none of my 3rd party modules appeared in the list, including 8211.o, so I cancelled out, how did it go for you?:

Were any errors returned as you went through the above list? Or was dhclient the first place where things broke down?

dhclient was the first problem. I didn't try to set an IP address, but that's a good thought. I'll try that tonight and see what happens.

Well, tonight I installed a Dell wireless card in my Dell laptop, RH9 recognized it in the config menu, and it worked immediately. No muss, no fuss. I think I'll donate the other card to charity. Really appreciate all of the help, all the attempts to get my card to work, but I just got tired of it. Been working on the darned thing for over a month, and enough is enough. Hey. The Dell card works first time!!!!

Yes!!
It's always good to hear about "out-of-the-box" linux solutions, can you share with us what model the dell card is? and what module is loaded for it? This is a question that many here ask.

If you'd like you can send your other card to me, I will get it working or die trying....LOL!