I'm not sure what distro Mepis is based on but Ubuntu is Debian and I got the wireless card working with issues/lockups with the following:
note: I had some lockups that I believe were related to the ndiswrapper so I'm hardwired to the LAN right now.

1) get the MS Windows driver for the Broadcom card( bcmwl5.inf, etc )
2) install the ndiswrapper utility
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils
3) use the wrapper to install the MS Windows driver
sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
4) install the ndiswrapper module into the kernel
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
5) if all works, load the module and driver at every boot
sudo ndiswrapper -m
6) use your ifconfig and iwconfig utilities, or others to find/connect to WAPs

Mepis is Debian based and it includes ndiswrapper along with the bcmwl5.inf and .sys files installed. When I enter ndiswrapper -l I get driver present and hardware present for the bcmwl5. but I can not associate with the wireless router. My R4000 is not the AMD64 processor it is the semperon 3000+ if that makes any difference.

have you located/found you WAP( or others around you ) using the wifi/config tools Mepis gives you? With Ubuntu, the network configuration tool lets me see a list of WAPs around. I'm pretty sure it just uses the iwconfig tool to list them and you might want to "google" for that, along with reading the manpages to see if you can even "see" what's going on around.

I think the other step might be to just hardcode the data you need into the /etc/network/interfaces file. For example, add:

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid YOURSSID
wireless_defaultkey 1
wireless-key1 YOUR_WEP_KEY_IN_HEX
wireless-keymode open
wireless-channel 11

auto wlan0

then run 'sudo ifconfig wlan up' to see if it comes up.

I forgot to ask, do you have you ide DMA activated? sudo hdparm /dev/hda

do you have the ATI driver( fglrx ) enabled and running? glxinfo

In Mepis there was no DMA and I had not tried the ATI driver also the wireless did not work with the 32bit or 64bit driver. I started to install the 32bit SUSE 9.3. What I did not know was the Semperon 3000+ is a 64bit processor, I thought it was a 32bit. I will try the 64bit SUSE 9.3 tonight.

hey guys I just bough t a R4000 and I put mandrake 10.2 on i but i cannot make the wireless card work and i need it for the web... any ideas???

please read the previous comments.

one more thing, I've been able to get pretty much everything working on the R4000 under a Ubuntu 5.04/Debian install. I'm be working on a webpage to post all the ins-and-outs of getting everything working.

Here is where I am, Mandriva 2005 LE installs fine but fails to reboot.

Mepis has no Ethernet or wireless.

Ubuntu/Kubuntu installs fine but when Gnome/KDE starts it hard locks the machine.

I do not have a DVD burner and the net installs Suse ask for the IP address for the FTP server, which I do not have.

I reread the entire post and followed the link to the ZV6000 forums, I will now retry Ubuntu.

Congratulations! I wonder If you or anyone else could enlight me with making it work on Suse9.3 .

I have a compaq R4000 AMD 64, with Xpress 200M, suse 9.3, kernel 2.6.11.4-21.7-default

After installing ATI driver fglrx64_6_8_0-8.13.4-1.x86_64.rpm, modifying /lib/modules/fglrx/buid/agpgart_be.c (change all instances of pci_find_class to pci_get_class) and applying the mentioned patches (in that order) I get it recognizing mi ATI Xpress 200M, which is a nice step forward. However, I can't get 3D working. DRI initialization fails:

(II) LoadModule: "fglrx"
(II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib64/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.o
(II) Module fglrx: vendor="FireGL - ATI Technologies Inc."
...
(II) fglrx(0): Primary V_BIOS segment is: 0xc000
(**) fglrx(0): Option "mtrr" "off"
(--) fglrx(0): Chipset: "RADEON XPRESS 200M (RS480 5955)" (Chipset = 0x5955)
(--) fglrx(0): (PciSubVendor = 0x103c, PciSubDevice = 0x3085)
(--) fglrx(0): board vendor info: third party grafics adapter - NOT original ATI
(--) fglrx(0): Linear framebuffer (phys) at 0xc0000000
(--) fglrx(0): MMIO registers at 0xb0100000
(--) fglrx(0): ChipExtRevID = 0x00
(--) fglrx(0): ChipIntRevID = 0x01
(--) fglrx(0): VideoRAM: 131072 kByte (64-bit SDR SDRAM)
(WW) fglrx(0): board is an unknown third party board, chipset is supported
...
(II) Loading sub module "fglrxdrm"
(II) LoadModule: "fglrxdrm"
(II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib64/modules/linux/libfglrxdrm.a
(II) Module fglrxdrm: vendor="FireGL - ATI Technologies Inc."
(II) fglrx(0): Depth moves disabled by default
(**) fglrx(0): Capabilities: 0x00000000
(**) fglrx(0): cpuFlags: 0x4000001f
(**) fglrx(0): cpuSpeedMHz: 0x000003e5
(==) fglrx(0): OpenGL ClientDriverName: "fglrx_dri.so"
(**) fglrx(0): using built in AGPGART module: yes
(**) fglrx(0): UseFastTLS=2
(**) fglrx(0): BlockSignalsOnLock=1
(==) fglrx(0): EnablePrivateBackZ = NO
(WW) fglrx(0): Cannot read colourmap from VGA. Will restore with default
(II) fglrx(0): UMM Bus area: 0xc05e9000 (size=0x07a17000)
(II) fglrx(0): UMM area: 0x405e9000 (size=0x07a17000)
(II) fglrx(0): driver needs XFree86 version: 4.3.x
(WW) fglrx(0): could not detect XFree86 version (query_status=-3)
(II) fglrx(0): doing DRIScreenInit
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] loaded kernel module for "fglrx" driver
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] DRM interface version 1.0
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] created "fglrx" driver at busid "PCI:1:5:0"
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] added 8192 byte SAREA at 0x00681000
(II) fglrx(0): [drm] drmMap failed
(EE) fglrx(0): DRIScreenInit failed!
(WW) fglrx(0): ***********************************************
(WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed! *
(WW) fglrx(0): * (maybe driver kernel module missing or bad) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * 2D acceleraton available (MMIO) *
(WW) fglrx(0): * no 3D acceleration available *
(WW) fglrx(0): ********************************************* *
(II) fglrx(0): FBADPhys: 0x40000000 FBMappedSize: 0x08000000
(II) fglrx(0): FBMM initialized for area (0,0)-(1280,8191)
(II) fglrx(0): FBMM auto alloc for area (0,0)-(1280,800) (front color buffer - assumption)
(**) fglrx(0): Option "BackingStore" "true"
(**) fglrx(0): Backing store enabled
(==) fglrx(0): Silken mouse enabled
(II) fglrx(0): Using hardware cursor (scanline 800)
(II) fglrx(0): Largest offscreen area available: 1280 x 7387
(**) fglrx(0): DPMS enabled

X-windows work but veeery slow. fglrxinfo shows the Mesa libraries are still taken control, bad!

display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.2.1)

I did use the --force option when installing the ATI driver, so I guess there are some other subtilities around. I haven't found anyone reporting it to work on Suse9.3.
Any hints? any new success stories around?
Thanks!

PS: could you provide us with a link to the clock-problem patch? Thanks in advance!!

Hello all:

I've been helping a friend get FC3 up and running on a Compaq R4000. We had everything working, and even ran apt for the updates and multimedia stuff. Had to use up2date for the current kernel though. In order for the ethernet to work he had to add a option to the kernel in grub (found on this forum).

When using nano to view a README file in a xterminal, use of the right shift key (shift + R) locked up the computer and it needed to be powered off. Since then, the x-server (gnome and kde) will lock up on boot if eth0 is active. Managed to get into x-server (by removing kudzu from rc3.d and running system-config-keyboard at comman line) and disable eth0-on-boot, but now eth0 will not activate via dhcp either in the x-server or via command line. Obviously we are totally perplexed by this. Any ideas? If not, how is the ethernet card activated in SuSE 9.3? I see someone here has it running. If we had gotten eth0 working in SuSE, we wouldn't have made a switch to FC3.

Thanks