I have been trying for a few hours to comb the internet for instructions on how to get the MN-520 wireless card working in Mandrake 10. While I have found instructions for Mandrake 9, these do not work for Mandrake 10 and I am unable to get Mandrake to detect the card with orinocs_cs or some of the other drivers that have been suggested.

I would greatly appreciate some help with getting this to work. I have tried the instructions here: ___;/w_w.cuddapahonline.co_/technology/linux/wireless/ml9.php and the instructions here: ___;/w_w.linuxquestions.or_/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=142500&highlight=mn50 to no avail. (it wouldn't let me post links to the sites I have tried because I have not yet made five posts.. so I am posting non-working links... since they don't work and can't be used for spamming purposes, i am hoping this is OK).

This person (who does not appear to be a newbie) seems to think that it does not work under version 10: ____;//bellsouthpwp.net/c/a/carverr/

I am a complete linux newbie and am trying to get linux loaded up on my laptop in time for school next week. Please help me if you can.

fairplayer1

Well, amazingley, I got it to work somehow... I did a bunch of things and then realized that I had to reboot for them to take effect and after the reboot.. everything was working 100%

I don't know the specifics but at least it is possible. You must edit /etc/pcmcia/config and put in these three lines:

card "Microsoft Wireless Notebook Adapter MN-520 1.0.3"
version "Microsoft", "Wireless Notebook Adapter MN520", "", "1.0.3"
bind "orinoco_cs"

I am not sure if anything else helped to get this to work because I tried everything that I could read online... just had forgotten to reboot.

New Question:

How do I optimize the speed of the wireless network? It is obviously a lot slower than it is in Windows XP (at the same spot). Any settings for sensitivity threshold, operating frequency, bitrate (in b/s) or etc. under the Wireless area that I should put in? All the best,

fairplayer1

I am running an MN-520 on an IBM Thinkpad 560Z with Linux Mandrake 10.0. I can connect to the internet through my D-Link DI-713P wireless router but I want to setup a WEP key (which I know how to do) on the router and then access the internet with the Thinkpad. Any suggestions on how to do that once I've setup a WEP key in the router config?

iwconfig wlan0 key YOURKEYHERE

Thank you.

Where do I enter that information? I am new to Linux.

Hey you guys, I worked on getting my mn520 to work for the past four days, I tried over and over again using ndiswrapper to pick up my card, but to no avail. I tried everything from downloading latest drivers to ungrading my kernel. nothing worked, Mandrake 10 still did not pick up on a wireless card. But finally, I did something on my own without the help of ndiswrapper and MDK10 picked it up after I turned my computer off. I went and added these lines to /etc/modprobe.conf and /etc/modules.conf right after the lines:
alias eth0 (reader's ethernet card driver here)

I put:
alias wlan0 orinoco_cs

and in the /etc/pcmcia/config
i put as one of the wlan cards right after the "Wireless network adapters" title:

card "Microsoft Wireless Notebook Adapter MN-520 1.0.3"
version "Microsoft", "Wireless Notebook Adapter MN-520", "", "1.0.3"
bind "orinoco_cs"

I then shut my mandrake box down completely and once I turned it back on the system picked up the card as eth1 and let me configure it. Now iwconfig picks it up as a wireless card and so does drakeconfig. Or whatever the madrake config utility is called. I hope this helps whoever reads this post.

Is it orinoco_cs or orinocs_cs? I saw it expressed both ways in this thread.