Hello All,

This my first post.

I am running Mandrake 9.2 on a Sony Vaio laptop under a dual boot
configuration with Windows XP on hda and Mandrake on hdc.

A backend Linksys WAP11 Wireless-B Access Point to a Xyxel
Prestige Router (no loopback!) is the base of the wireless network.

It works fine with windows, however I need to configure Linux so it
can see the access point and thus the wireless network.

As of now, there is NO wireless network to access!

iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.


The drivers are installed okay, I think.

cat ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
NEEDHOSTNAME=yes


Resutls of cardctl ident:

Socket 0:
product info: "Agere Systems", "Wireless PC Card Model 0110", "", ""
manfid: 0x0156, 0x0003
function: 6 (network)

Results of dmesg:

cs: memory probe 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff: clean.
orinoco.c 0.13e (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
orinoco_cs.c 0.13e (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
eth1: Station identity 0015:0002:0001:000a
eth1: Looks like an Intersil firmware version 1.10.2
eth1: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth1: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth1: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth1: failed to read MAC address!
orinoco_cs: register_netdev() failed
orinoco_lock() called with hw_unavailable (dev=cea53800)

I created a hermes.conf file in /etc/pcmcia and restarted pcmcia and the
system beeps and "sees" the card.

I have wireless tools available.

My take is that the pcmcia service is up (it is), but I need help
getting the wireless access point (Linksys Wireless-B)
and wireless network setup.


I'll stop here because if I give too much information up front, I may
never hear
back again from you.

Thanks for any assistance.

I have posted this somewhere else on the same forum. This might help you.
If you basic problem is getting wireless to work.



I would recommend the following 2 alternate procedures.

PROCEDURE-1
==========
edit your file /etc/modules.conf
add the following line :

alias eth0 ornico_pci

Now I understand that you do not have Ocrnico wireless card, however this driver which comes inbuilt(in mandrake 9.2 atleast) is known to work with most of the wireless cards. It worked on my HP Pavillion ze5385 running Mandrake 9.2. Give it a shot and let me know if it worked.

PROCEDURE-2
==========
If you have windows drivers working fine for your WLAN card, you can make them work on Linux too. There is a wrapper available which makes Windows drivers work in Linux. This can be downloaded from http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
This needs atleast kernel(2.4.25 or 2.6.4)

It is : alias eth0 e100
this is for the ethernet card.
I tried having two aliases for eth0 but then
eth0 didn't get created at all.