I was wondering if anyone has gotten the wireless cards with the ACX100 chipset working and how?

I have the DLink DWL650+, I have found and downloaded the binary drivers, managed to ping the card, but I can not connect to the access point.

I have been working on this for 5 days and I am about to give up, but it is frustrating because I have seen (and read) at sourceforge of this card working with Mandrake 9.1.

Yes.

While my smc 2435w is not a DWL-650+, it is an acx100 card, in fact I'm posting from it at 22m. I've been testing this driver for about 5 days now, it's quirky, but if you leave it alone it works and I feel I can actually see a speed differential over my plain 11b cards.

When you say you've "managed to ping the card" what does that mean? Can you get any output from iwconfig and post it?

ps: here's what the iwconfig looks like on the card:
# iwconfig eth1
eth1 v0.9.0.3a 11b+ ESSID:"wireless_hoc" Nickname:"AP0544D2"
Channel:4 Access Point: 00:03:2F:06:F4:13Bit Rate=22Mb/s
RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption key:xxxx-xxxx-xx Encryption modepen
Power Managementff

Here it is my iwconfig:

ESSID:"default" Nickname:"AP12B01E"
Channel:6 Access Point: BE: B4:74:AE:0C:A2 Bit Rate=22Mb/s
RTS thrff Fragment thrff Encryption key: off

That is not the MAC addr of the access point.

When I say that I can ping the card I enter "ping and the address of the card"

I'm assuming the acx100 module loads with the usual taint warning but without forcing and that ifconfig shows the correct mac address of your card. Are you able to change the key or essid via iwconfig, or do you get errors?

Just so we're on the same page, here's the sequence of events I used to get the smc card going:
1. dl'ed ivor's binaries
2. objcopy'd the 2.4.19-16mdk binary to match my uname -r
3. copied the binary to the correct /lib/modules/...directory
4. ran depmod -a
5. started a root console with tail -f /var/log/messages going
6. started another root console and hotplugged the card
7. iwconfig eth1 key xxxxxxxxx, and wait a second or 2
8. iwconfig eth1 essid essidname and wait a second
9. iwconfig eth1 essid essidname again
10. here's what shows up in the log:

Aug 2 11:48:23 Thinkpad kernel: Transmit authentication request!
Aug 2 11:48:23 Thinkpad kernel: Transmit association request!
Aug 2 11:48:23 Thinkpad kernel: Associated!

at this point I can ping the router and then the web

here's what's in my ifcfg-eth1 file for this card:
(eth0 is either a dwl-650v2 or a belkin f5d6020 or another smc 2435w)
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1
DEVICE=eth1
#BOOTPROTO=dhcp
IPADDR=192.168.2.97
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.2.0
BROADCAST=192.168.2.255
GATEWAY=192.168.2.1
ONBOOT=no

finally, perhaps you could change the params on your router to match the card, eg: channel 6, essid "default", etc. and see what happens. I'm assuming your card is included in any mac filters and that wep is off on the router for testing purposes.

Just call me a stupid noob, but I need some handholding. When you did step 2 and 3 from above what was the exact command used?

My binary is the 2.4.21-0.13mdk.

As of right now if I perform step 8 nothing happens.

The objcopy stuff is only necessary if you get errors on loading the module about it having wrong kernel version. Those are outlined in the HOWTO_acx100.txt file that came with the modules, or if for some reason you didn't get the howto with the modules, it's on the site you d/l'ed the modules from. It also contains a generic startup script that you should probably use to start with and when the card is working, you can begin to customize it. That howto is essential reading for this module.

sorry, forgot this bit:

The commmand I used to copy my module was
"cp acx100sta-2.4.19-16mdk.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/pcmcia", the current dir for that command was the Acx100Drv/2.4.19-16mdk. The exact cmd will be different for you since you're on 9.1, not 9.0.

Well I have tried everything you suggested along with the drivers on the acx100 project on sourceforge. All had the same results the card appears to be working but there is no MAC address from the Access Point. Here is the FCCID for my card, it may shed some light on things KA2DWL-650PLUSB1

Yeah, last time I checked the sourceforge project the beta driver was ad-hoc only, ie: no managed mode via router/access point. I can think of a couple more things to check: check for firmware upgrade availability (which may or may not help, the idea is maybe it brings the card closer to the TI reference design, or fixes a bug), and, as a long shot, maybe the hotplug system is loading extra modules that perhaps are interfering, yeah...it's a long shot.

Personally, I'm quite surprised that this card is behaving badly, there are quite a few success stories surfacing with these binaries and the acx100 based cards.

There is no firmware update for this card. You can get a managed mode with the sourceforge driver, but you need to do it manually. Today I a broadcast ping successfully. From everything I am seeing the card appears to be working , but it will not connect to the router.

I will keep you posted if I get it fixed. It sounds like there are other people having the same problem, on the sourceforge forums.

Well, that's somewhat encouraging, I saw in a couple of posts here and there that some people seemed to believe different channels worked better than others...for whatever it's worth.

One problem there is with these cards is the fact there are 2 different raidos used. One problem I have is the driver is showing the wrong MAC address of the pcmcia card which will be fixed in the next release from sourceforge.

SUCCESS!!!!

I re-compiled the open source driver yet again, ran the start script and I was able to ping the router. what is weird is that I run the start script then immeditatly run the stop script then run the start script again and it works every time.

Ivor's driver will not work with my card, my card uses the maxim radio.

Congrats!
Tell me, re: the open source driver, what file did you get the firmware from?

APLUSMX.BIN

Also, I booted then inserted the card.

Interesting... I'm not familiar with that file.

I'm using the oss driver w/ smc2435w card to post this, actually, I like it better (so far) than the binary, even though it uses like mega memory once loaded, about 2x the binary's consumption. I used the acx100sta-2.4.18-6mdk module from ivor's package for my firmware (eg: placed a link named "acx100_pci.o" which points to that module in the acx100/firmware directory. The oss driver actually sets up some info in /proc/net/wireless, unlike the binary, so you get link and link quality info, also, it allows the txpower option which is nice.

thanx for the info, and again: congrats.