MA101 wireless USB, HWAddr is 00:00:00:00:00:00

fuzzy_umbra · 10-19-2005, 11:31 PM

Hello,

I am new to Linux. I have been able to use ndiswrapper to install the driver for my NetGear MA 101 USB wireless ethernet adapter. I have gotten as far as being able to see my signal level is 61%. However, I am not yet able to connect to my network. I know the network and adapter themselves are functional, as I can use the same machine to boot up into XP and connect.

Running ifconfig shows my MAC address is all zeroes; that doesn't seem right:

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet6 addr: fe80::200:ff:fe00:0/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

Running iwconfig shows:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.457 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
RTS thr:427428 B Fragment thr:427452 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management max timeout:0us mode:All packets received
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-100 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

iwlist wlan0 scan, to get my ESSID, shows:
No scan results.

I have entered my ESSID manually, using Windows XP's name for the network (is that right?), and entered the WEP key in many combinations, but no success yet. I don't know if that is the problem, or if it's a problem with the operating system being able to use the adapter.

The operating system is "Linspire Five-O". Haven't had much luck with support there, so I am expanding the scope of my SOS.

Many thanks in advance!

cdhgee · 10-20-2005, 11:12 AM

That probably means that the firmware for the device hasn't loaded properly or has failed to load. I don't use ndiswrapper, I use linux-wlan-ng, and I had the same sort of problems where the MAC address was showing up as 00:00:00:00:00:00 because the firmware wasn't loading. I managed to sort the problem eventually.

I did originally try ndiswrapper but found it somewhat unreliable - you might want to give linux-wlan-ng a go - http://www.linux-wlan.org/ - I'm fairly sure it supports the MA101. I use an MA111 and it works fine for me.