I'm using redhat 9.0 and I'm trying to start my wireless ethernet connection . I'm using a DWL-520 network pci adapter card from D-link. This is version A with the prism chipset. The power light and activity light are on but no network connection is made. I downloaded these drivers from wlan.org and installed them => linux_wlan_ng_0.2.1-pre15. I followed the directions for activating the pci card and when I do

<wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate = enable>, I get a result_code = implementation failed. When I look at the log file that's when I get the error hfa384x_drvr_start: failed, result = -110. Default is my ssid and I did place it in my wlan.conf file. If I do a ifconfig wlan0 up, I get no such device. Now, if I do a /etc/wlan restart , I get the result_code = success and the log files says wlan0 brought up successfully but when I enter <ifconfig wlan0 up>, I get the error <no such device>. What should I do?

Also, my machine type is 686x, 64 MB ram. I believe my motherboard is PCI2.2 compliant.

Thanks for any help. I've looked through every how-to I could.

elynum

The problem is that isn't the right driver. I think you need the ndiswrapper driver for that card. It isn't a true Prism 2.5 chipset even though it claims to be.

Thanks! I'll try that. How reliable are the ndiswrappers? I had heard about them because I had bought a previous card the linksys WMP11V4 and didn't use it because I wasn't sure about the ndiswrappers so I returned that card. What's a good site to get the ndiswrappers from. Any tricks to them or just follow the instructions on the web site. By the way, it makes sense that something is wrong with the drivers I have but tell me why do you think it isn't the prism chipset when I look at system hardware it says Prism chipset. Why does it show up as prism, just curious.

Thanks Again!

That card switched from the prism chipset to some other chipset (Realtek I believe) which attempts to emulate to prism chipset. Only HW revisions A1, A2, B1, and B2 are really Prism chipsets. I went through the same thing you did, and ended up with a Netgear MA311 because Netgear is nice enough not to change chipsets without changing the part number and I use the hostap drivers with it.

ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net has the drivers.

Yeah I had heard about that. I thought I had Hardware version A but I probably don't. Strange that it still shows up as prism when I look at it on the system hardware browser. You know the funny thing was that I was going to comp usa (don't ask me why I was going there but I was in a hurry to get a network card) to buy a netgear ma311 and turned out they didn't have it even though I called them in advance to make sure so I got the d-link one. Which sucks! I only bought it because I thought it was hardware version A and it was real cheap like 40 bucks. Bad decision because I've been up late scouring the web trying to get this stupid card to work. D-link and Linksys both switched chips like this. They suck! I'll give them one more shot and try the ndiswrappers.

Thanks again!

Hi Jtshaw,

Well, I'm giving up on this card, the dwl-520 because I installed the ndiswrappers and I was getting unresolved symbol errors trying to compile it and even though I continued I managed to get a set mode 8b08 and set failed on device wlan0 function not implemented.

I'm just going to get the ma311 like I originally planned and return this card. How easy is it to setup the ma311 under redhat 9.0. Any tips.

Not sure about RedHat 9. You basically have three choices for drivers though. Wlan-ng, hostap, and the orinoco drivers which are built into the 2.6 series kernels. I have tried all three of these options and I can tell you the hostap drivers are the best.

Just get the drivers out of cvs from http://hostap.epitest.fi/ and follow the guys instructions. Make sure to get the cvs ones though, he has fixed a lot of bugs/annoyances since his last release. Though I hear on the mail list he is preparing to make a new release soon.

thanks for your help, I got my netgear card to work on wlan drivers without much of a hassle.

Now, I have another problem. I'm able to connect to internet alright but I can't ftp to my windows machine from my linux box. So I can't share files between systems. I went in and setup the other machines in my etc/host file but still can't see my linux box. What do I need to do u know?

basically I guess I'm saying can't see my linux box in network neighborhood from windows

well do you have samba running? because network neighborhood only shows computers that broadcast smb information.

No, I dont have samba working. Would that affect me when I'm trying to look at a html page from my unix directory from my ip address. Like when I type in from my windows machine that ip address (because I don't have a domain name) it can't connect. Is that the problem I need samba to be able to accesss a web page running off of my unix box even though I can ping the other computers.

No, you need apache running to do html pages. Samba is just for windows networking (aka SMB networking).

I have apache running but when I try to use my windows machine to take a look at a test html page. It won't connect even though I disabled my firewall for port 80.