Hi all,

I've installed FC4 on my Dell D800 (Dual boot with WindersXP), and it's working pretty much like I'd like it too, except for the ipw2100 wireless nic. According to the ipw2100 project on sourceforge, I need new firmware. The problem I have is that the current firmware version number is nothing like what's being offered on the ipw2100 project.

My current firmware version is: 410.5.13, and what's being offered by the ipw2100 project is in the range of v0.29-v0.43, on up to v0.55-current firmware.

So, do I need to upgrade the firmware? Is mine so old it doesn't make the charts at all? I'm so confused!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Andy Suplee

I believe the version numbers listed on the firmware page for the ipw2100 sourceforge project are meant to correspond to the version of the driver that you are using. So if you are using the most current version of the driver, you would use the v0.55-current firmware.

Did you check out the links on this page?
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/index.php#links
There are links to rpms of the ipw2100 driver and firmware for Fedora. Also, the link to Freakalek's How-To is worth reading, though apparently outdated. I learned A LOT about working with wireless in Linux through that page.

I have a Gateway 200ARC laptop dual-booting Gentoo and WinXP, and I have the ipw2100 wireless up an running just fine (I'm posting from the laptop, actually). I used to have Mandrake 10.1 on this computer, and wireless was a hit and miss proposition with that. Gentoo has been relatively trouble-free.

IThanks for the information! I did check out the links you sent me, but I wasn't able to figure out why there was no correllation between what I have, and what they were offering.

I suppose my question is whether upgrading the firmware is going to affect the ability of the NIC to work under WindersXP. Forgive the ignorance, but does the firmware get installed on the hardware itself, and if so, will WindersXP recognize it?

I do need to run XP for some apps, so I need everything working on both OSs.

Thanks for all of the help. I'm hoping to take a whack at this tonight.

Andy Suplee
FC4

Whatever you do in Linux should generally not affect the XP side, at least as far as working with the wireless goes. I can boot into either Gentoo or XP and use the wireless without a problem. On my system, the firmware is installed to /lib/firmware/.

I think the firmware may be developed separately for Windows and Linux, hence the different version numbers, though I am not certain about that.

Glad to help. Good luck!

doug