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Is there a very small Linux os that will reconize a Linksys WPC 11 v4 network adapter? I have been able to run DSL, Feather, Arklinux and other small os via an ISO cd on my very old laptop. Toshiba w/98 mb RAM and 4 GB HD. None of them recognize the pcmcia card. This is my first time w/linux. My notebook barely fits XP, cannot fit SP2 or anything else with it. I refuse to return to 98.
If it requires typing in a bunch of (to me random letters and numbers,) code, you will need to hold my hand!
With Linux, the driver you need is usually determined by the chipset of the card. Unfortunately, Linksys is rather indiscriminate in what chipset it uses, so we'll need a bit more information. In theory, any of the distros you list should be able to run the card, so if you have one installed, open a console and enter lspci. That will give you a listing of all the hardware on the machine, and hopefully the chipset will be listed in the entry for your wireless card. If you don't understand what you're seeing, post the output.
By the way, if you want to save the output of lspci to a text file, enter this at the command prompt:
lspci > lspci.txt
That will create a file called lspci.txt that will contain the lspci output. You can then open that with any text editor.
Sorry for the long delay, I'm not on my computer every day, plus it took me an evening to check out 9 ISO Linux files I had downloaded. Most would not load on my laptop, could not find module "dri" or the "screen" or "no space left on device" you get the point. Feather Linux did load and provided power to the Linksys card and the "lspci" command yielded:
Host Bridge controller USB. Communication (fir)
0000:00:13.0 yielded Bridge:Toshiba America Info Systems topic97 (rev20)
0000:00:13.1 yielded Bridge:Toshiba America Info Systems topic97 (rev20)
0000:15:00.0 Ethernet Controller: yielded Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8180L 802.11b MAC(rev20)
I have a .tar file from yielded site that is supposed to be the Linux driver but I cannot get Feather Linux to recognize the floppy.
Any ideas on this.
Distribution: Mac OS X 10.6.4 "Snow Leopard", Win 7, Ubuntu 10.04
Posts: 322
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by OddGerard
Sorry for the long delay, I'm not on my computer every day, plus it took me an evening to check out 9 ISO Linux files I had downloaded. Most would not load on my laptop, could not find module "dri" or the "screen" or "no space left on device" you get the point. Feather Linux did load and provided power to the Linksys card and the "lspci" command yielded:
Host Bridge controller USB. Communication (fir)
0000:00:13.0 yielded Bridge:Toshiba America Info Systems topic97 (rev20)
0000:00:13.1 yielded Bridge:Toshiba America Info Systems topic97 (rev20)
0000:15:00.0 Ethernet Controller: yielded Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8180L 802.11b MAC(rev20)
I have a .tar file from yielded site that is supposed to be the Linux driver but I cannot get Feather Linux to recognize the floppy.
Any ideas on this.
This is the important part:
RTL8180L 802.11b
This means that you have a Realtek 8180 chipset. The 8180 is supported in the mainline kernel as of 2.6.23. It looks like feather is using an old 2.4.27 kernel.
I would recommend trying some other distro that has a newer kernel, your wireless should be supported out of the box. I'd recommend puppy but retro is only on kernel 2.6.21, so you'd have to be sure to get the one with 2.6.25 kernel.
Thanks for the info, I tried Puppy 2.6.25 but it would not install; Puppy 2.6.21 will install but as claudius753 suggested, it would not support the card. I'll wait 'till I get a better laptop with a newer CPU.
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