Hello all, here's hoping you can help me out. I am a COMPLETE newcomer to Linux. I am knowledgeable with Windows but wanted to try Linux. Long story short, I am hooked! I absolutely love the Linux features and environment! But, i cant get my wireless card to work with Red Hat 7.3

I have and SMC 2635W, which i believe is a prism2 card. I am very confused as to what the steps even are to set up this card and get connected to the internet. I really dont want to give up on Linux but I cant even get online and it's been a week.

What I need is a link to a tutorial or just some step by step instructions for a total newb on how in hell one configures this stuff. I have the wlan rpms, but I havent the faintest idea how to properly install the modules or get the OS to recognize the card or use it to connect to the internet. In short, I need some soup to nuts help. Everything I can find is just "oh, here's the rpm, you know what to do" and I really dont!

As per the sticky thread, I went and got the output of /sbin/lspci, dmesg, and I also got the kernel version etc.

This is RedHat 7.3 on kernel 2.4.18-3, with a carbus PCMCIA card on an Inspiron 8000.

Rather than take up any more space with this huge thread, I have put this all together in a txt file on the web so that you can use it to help me understand what's going on here.

geocities.com/scarnefan/Trouble.txt

(wont let me post a url, so i'm afraid you'll have to cut and paste, sorry)

That contains everything from dmesg and the rest. Please help me, I am desperate to keep Linux because so far I absolutely love it, but if I cant get this working I'll be forced to go back to windows (aaaah!). Here's hoping you can help me out, and maybe some other poor soul will run across this thread and be able to get his working as well.

Thanks in advance,
-J

Well I gave up for the time being and have installed Windows 98 until I can figure it all out. I will try out Red Hat 9 on a separate partition a bit later, see if that works out any better, maybe pick up a book. I really do love Linux, but it's not worth spending two weeks getting connected to my beloved internet. If anyone does know the answer to this, please post and I'll have RedHat back on my computer so fast the hard drive will spin.
-J

JayLoden,
Don't give up yet. A newer distro like RH9.0, Mandrake9.1 or my favorite SuSE 8.2 should do a better job of detecting and configuring your card. I run a Netgear MA410RA on a Compaq Presario 2170. I did have to do some tweaking to get it working, but it was well worth it. I summarized what I did at http://pages.sbcglobal.net/zvan.
You might also do a search on your card in this forum for more insights.

Zane

I wrote to SMC and they sent me beta versions of the drivers for the 2635W for Redhat 7.3 and 8.0. Unfortunately, I have a 2835W and Mandrake9.1.