I Can't seem to get my PC CARD on my laptop (Smartbook i100Z) working under Ubuntu Feisty (7.04).
The OS does not detect it. I tried to manually detect the card and this didn't do much either. I do not know how to continue...

Maybe the cardbus isn't active at all (?)

Also I can't find more detailed specs on the hardware. This is printed on the card itself.

SWEEX Wireless LAN PC CARD 140 NITRO XM
Model: LW141
WLAN 802.11b/g Cardbus Javelin
H: 0.3
MAC: 00160A-000FEC
SN: LW415BNE004074

For what it's worth...

Welcome to LQ!

Try running lspci and see if that detects the card. What we really need to know is what kind of chipset is in there because that will determine the driver to use.

Nice,

Ok it worked.

I found the chipset with lspci.

Then I installed the win driver using ndiswrapper.

pbuddenberg@Smartbook:~$ ndiswrapper -l
wlancig : driver installed
device (1260:3886) present

Then it took me some time to get the right settings. But finaly it worked. I mostly used the Ubuntu wiki:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...er/Ndiswrapper

Tanx

Peter

Well, yes and no. Hopefully a quick explanation will clear up what is going on.

As you may have noticed, wireless support in Linux is variable. Some chipsets are incredibly well supported and others have virtually no support. For chipsets that have no native Linux drivers, there is ndiswrapper which allows Windows drivers to function in Linux. Your chipset (the ISL3886) does have native linux support, and that is the Prism54 project. So in essence, you've got two drivers to choose from.

As far as ndiswrapper goes, you'll see a couple of things. People use it frequently even when they don't need to because it tends to be easier to set up. However, a fair bit of the Linux community consider it an abomination since it uses proprietary closed source drivers. Whether to use it or not is your choice.

The Linux driver for your card is call islsm, and is part of the Prism54 site. The main instructions for downloading and installing it are here, and I agree they are a touch confusing. Have a read and post any questions you might have. Basically what you'll do to use this driver is to download and compile the kernel module and download and install firmware. Both of these are usually pretty easy to do.

The one thing to look out for is that while you can have both ndiswrapper and islsm installed on your computer at the same time, you can't try to use them at the same time as they'll fight over the card and nothing will work.

Ok thanks a lot. This gives me some more insight on how to tackle the problem next time.
So I've used ndiswrapper. Say I want to use the Linux native driver. Do I just Delete the ndiswrapper software and start over with prism54?

Actually you don't have to delete ndiswrapper at all, you just need to install prism54. The issue is both drivers can't be loaded at the same time. I'll use my own rig as an example. My wireless card is a Broadcom and like yours, has a native linux driver (bcm43xx) and ndiswrapper. Since bcm43xx is still a work in progress, I keep both on my machine. The trick is to make sure that only one loads at a time. Since bcm43xx is automatically loaded, if I want to use ndiswrapper, I first have to unload bcm43xx. The sequence looks like this:

modprobe -r bcm43xx
modprobe ndiswrapper

As long as I don't have bcm43xx and ndiswrapper loaded at the same time (you use the lsmod command to see what modules are loaded) then it works.

You'll have the same issue if you install prism54. Just be sure that islsm and ndiswrapper don't show up in the lsmod output at the same time.

Ok, I think I understand. I'll have a go on the prism54 software as soon as I feel up to it. It actually works fine now anyway.
Thanks for your help, much appreciated...

Peter