I installed Mandrake 9.1 yesterday on my sony PCG-GRZ615G laptop computer. Everything works really great, except my wireless pcmcia card is not supported. (Sitecom Wireless Card 11Mbps WL-011, Linux Atmelwlandriver) I visited the website of the manufacturer and donwloaded the linux driver together with installation instructions, but it doesnot function at all. Can someone provide me with help??

go here and download this module, unless you've compiled a new kernel and made some version changes it should match the mandrake 9.1 kernel (2.4.21-0.13mdk):
http://www.houseofcraig.net/pcmf502rd.o you'll need to right-click the link and chose "save as" or similar, watch which directory it's going to be saved in and open a console and cd to that directory. You should be logged in as root to do this, don't just su, actually log in as root. Now, move the module to your modules directory: mv pcmf502rd.o /lib/modules/2.4.21-0.13mdk/kernel/drivers/net/pcmcia.
run depmod -a, you may get a couple of "unresolved symbol" errors, that's ok, any other error is not. Plug your card in if it's not in already. run modprobe pcmf502rd, (that's not a typo, leave off the trailing .o) if you get errors, please post them, else continue...

Run lsmod | grep pcmf502rd, one line should be returned from that command containing pcmf502rd and some numbers following. Run ifconfig -a you should see eth0 or eth1 in addition to lo. Run ifconfig again using the device name from above and an ip address that makes sense for your router or access point like this: ifconfig eth0 192.168.2.100. Now run iwconfig, you should see something like this:

eth0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"wireless_hoc" Nickname:"Thinkpad"
NWIDff/any Mode:Managed Frequency:2.427GHz Bit Rate=22Mb/s
Tx-Power=47 dBm Sensitivity:0/65535
Retry limit:3 RTS thr=2346 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:xxxx-xxxx-xx Encryption modepen
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

if all the preceeding goes well post the output of iwconfig back here and we'll continue with how/where to put the settings so it's all automatic when you boot the machine or when you plug the card in and on a suspend/resume.

I you like you can go to my site and read this small howto I put together for both the atmel and admtek drivers: http://www.houseofcraig.net/belkin_howto.php there is a link on the page to download a kernel module for mandrake, *don't* use that one as it is for mandrake 9.0, not 9.1. The atmel configuration instructions are specific to a belkin card, do not copy them verbatim, use them as a guide substituting the appropriate info for your card.

Thanks for the reply. I tried it but when I run the command modprobe pcmf502rd, I got confronted with an error that says something like gcc is running compiler version 3, when you are trying to run compiler 2, which will not work..Any more tips??

Thanks in advance

you could try forcing the module for testing purposes by using insmod -f pcmf502rd, but the better solution is to compile the source code on your own machine. I went to the Sitecom site and downloaded the package for linux just to get a look at it, it all seems to be there along with a readme, so compiling that source into a module shouldn't be too bad.

conceptually, what you want to do is:
1. copy the tar.gz file to /usr/local/src
2. cd to that directory and run tar zxf filename.tar.gz
3. look for a new directory and cd to it, then look for and read any files with names like "readme" or "install", following the instructions line by line. You'll definitely need the kernel headers installed and if they're not and you get an error to that effect, mandrake has an rpm package on the cd's for them.