Okay, I give up. I have done reinstalls, recompilation of the kernel, etc., etc. in Mandrake 9.1. Not only does the wireless not work (although it did for a short time during my first install), there seems to be a problem with the configuration system in Mandrake 9.1 that causes all sorts of other problems in the presence of the wireless card.

So, my latest theory is it is time to try a new distro. I keep reinstalling Mandrake to no avail, so I may as well try installing something else.

Does anyone have an MA401 card running on a laptop? If so, what distro? What distro do you recommend anyway?

I like Mandrake because of its update feature, the ease of kernel recompilation and the fact that it stays pretty current.

I was thinking of trying Redhat.

Your suggestions will be appreciated.

I'm typing right now from a K6-2 300MHz notebook running Slackware 9.0 and a Netgear MA401 wireless 802.11b pcmcia card.

When I installed Slackware 9.0 (with the wireless tools package), it automatically detected the MA401 and loaded the orinoco_cs module. I configured the card in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts, and ran netconfig to enable the DHCP client.

You can configure the wireless card by using the command iwconfig ie. iwconfig eth0 essid "your_essid" key "your_WEP_key".

I installed Suze 8.1. I looked at Slackware and this is probably a good choice, but it didn't seem like Slackware has an automatic update option? Also, it seems like kde updates and the like are packaged in Suze rpms very early in release (and other Suze rpms seem to be readily available).

Wireless now works, although I have to restart the network for some reason when I switch from wired to wireless. I can't find a good way to do this, except by console -- /etc/init.d/ ./network restart

It *seems* stable. That is, so far it has run without messing up the start up configuration for several re-boots. However, there is one slight error in the login (background isn't coming up how I set it). I don't know if this is a related problem or something else.

Of course, I have managed to create another mess -- Suze 8.2 is not available on the web, so I installed 8.1 and then installed kde 3.1. However, you will see I have another post in "software" explaining how I managed to screw it up and can't get konqueror to run.

RedHat 8 and 9 work great with the MA401.. I am transmitting this on one right now..

How did you get it to work? I have tried on wireless home and the office network. All I get is the message...

Failed...
failed to get IP information for eth1

It detects the card and I get a good signal on the card but no dice. Help anyone!

Sledge