I know there's already a lot of traffic on this forum about this card in a linux environment but nothing that seems to apply to me directly. This makes me think it must be an obvious problem that I'm personally not familure with. Althought I've been using Linux for quite a few years I've always managed to steer clear of all those minute details and now it's comming back to bite me.
Anyway thank's to quite a few posts by finnegan I have a good idea how this all works my only problem is loading the module. The compile works fine, I have the correct version of the drivers(realtek download site), and the card works in a windows environment. The insmod command returns the following output:

rtl8180_24x.o: init_module: No such device

Also, the output from the iwpriv command used to establish the connection outputs the following

wlan0 no private ioctls

If anyone knows what the problem might be I'd greatly appreciate any help.

I JUST compiled my driver, what you can do to get as far as I am...

#unzip rh90-8180(120).zip

#cd release

(which I expect you did already)

modify your Makefile, through either a GUI editor, but I prefer VIM, and replace the kernel version with, well mine is equal to linux-2.4.20-gentoo-r6 or something, check out /usr/src, I'm ASSUMING you got the Gentoo kernel sources, otherwise issue

# emerge sys-kernel/gentoo-sources

if you have to get the sources, then you have to at least configure, make dep, and make your kernel, and I'd really recommend you install the matching bzImage and run off it then, but if you do have the sources and you compiled your kernel off that, you're safe enough

after you're Makefile will see your sources as /usr/src/(whateveryou'reusing) then you'll need to issue a

# make

THEN insmod the rtl8180l driver that's generated. That's as far as I've gotten and I'll post if I get further

Thanks much for the info although I should have kept my post a little more current. While re-configuring my kernel for other reasons I happened to stumble upon the wireless pcmcia support options and turned them on so actually I've gotten this far although I'm stumped again because the card still doesn't talk to the bus it seems. I have a compaq laptop with a Texas Instruments PCI-1211 Cardbus that uses IRQ 10 but the card doesn't seem to communicate with it. It can read it's vendor but not the MAC. If there's any output I can post to clearify my problems please let me know. Thanks again.

Im running gentoo on a Dell Inspiron 5100. I also have the netgear ma521 wireless card. I used to run redhat on my old laptop but since I just got a new one I thought that I would put gentoo on it. I was able to the the ma521 working under redhat but now when I compile and try to insmod the drive I get the "no such device" error also. xeristian/null, were you able to insmod the driver on your system? if so could you post how you did it and what you did to get it working?

Linksys WPC11 V4 ?

That's a PC card right? It uses a broadcom chipset... Good luck getting it to work on linux.

I guess I haven't kept up with this posting thing until you guys posted I had forgotten about my post. Anyway I'm glad to say that I got it working with the drivers Realtek supplied on their site and it was actually quite a bit easier than I thought. Just for the record it's a realtek chipset not a broadcom. I decided a stage two gentoo install wasn't good enough and re-installed a stage one which for those not familure with gentoo means compiling every bit of code on the machine yourself (well, kinda) and in the process of building a kernel for my laptop I must have enabled something I was missing before hand. After that I just compiled the realtek drivers and it worked beautifully.

The card does work in linux. I had i working on my old laptop running redhat9. I just got a new laptop and installed gentoo but I cant get the module to insmod.

jettom: I was getting the same error as you, I compiled my kernel from a stage 1 too but I cant get the card to wrok. Do you remember what you did?

I really wish I could give you a definite answer. I can tell you this. I merged the gentoo-sources kernel then ran genkernel and very carefully picked out only the devices for my laptop. I remember one thing I did wierd that may have helped was by selecting kernel support for wireless lans but not selecting a chipset since I knew there were seperate drivers I was going to install later. I would say use genkernel and just go though it with a fine-tooth comb and make sure all support for wireless lans is enabled. It was a few months ago so I'm afraid I don't remember much more than that. Best of luck