Wireless pci card troubles, been through all i can find!

michael.cosmas · 10-22-2006, 10:25 AM

Hi. I have a Kcorp KLS-530 pci wireless card and just installed Ubuntu 64 bit. I downloaded the driver for it , and used ndisgtk to install the driver.

Code:

michali@asus:~$ ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
wlancig         driver present, hardware present

then I tried setting up the password etc and it's all good, I get this:

Code:

michali@asus:~$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"PALACE"
          Mode:Managed  Channel=6  Access Point: 00:14:6C:62:30:5A
          Sensitivity=0/200
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

sit0      no wireless extensions.

My access point is called PALACE and it seems to find it fine. The only problem is it won't connect to it. wifi-radar says it can't get an IP address (i've tried DHCP and static), and wireless assistant just says "connection failed".

If there are any other tests I can do just tell me and i'll post up the results but I really need internet on this pc today.

any help is appreciated, thanks.

Hangdog42 · 10-22-2006, 10:35 AM

Quote:

Ubuntu 64 bit. I downloaded the driver for it , and used ndisgtk to install the driver.

Did you download the 64 bit driver? If you try to use a 32 bit driver on a 64 bit system you are going to have troubles.

michael.cosmas · 10-22-2006, 10:57 AM

Good point. I just downloaded the XP drivers (32 bit). But surely if ndiswrapper says the hardware is present then the driver is fine?

I can't seem to find 64 bit drivers for that card. does that mean this is the end?

Hangdog42 · 10-22-2006, 11:23 AM

Quote:

Good point. I just downloaded the XP drivers (32 bit). But surely if ndiswrapper says the hardware is present then the driver is fine?

Unfortunately no. I don't know why ndiswrapper doesn't throw an error when you try to put a 32 bit driver in a 64 bit OS, but it doesn't.

Quote:

I can't seem to find 64 bit drivers for that card. does that mean this is the end?

Maybe not. The main issue here is going to be what chipset that card uses. If it is a chipset that is natively supported by Linux, you won't have this problem. You're going to have to do some digging, but if you're lucky the output of lspci will tell you. Otherwise you might try spending some quality time on Google and see if that information is posted anywhere.

You also should have a look in the ndiswrapper wiki (see my sig for the link) and see if that card is listed in the supported cards section. That frequently has links to drivers.

As a last, and rather radical, alternative, you could always use a 32 bit version of Ubuntu until you can get this sorted out on 64 bits.

michael.cosmas · 10-22-2006, 04:12 PM

K I went ahead and installed 32bit Ubuntu.

did the same thing, and now internet sort of works.

i say sort of becuase:
1. it isn't on when i start ubuntu. i have to go into network settings, deactivate and reactivate the wireless, make it default, then go into wifi-radar and conncect to the network. and then this probably fails the first 2 times so has to be redone.

2. it's not a great conection. I know that the signal is good becuase in windows it works fine, but it's like it keeps dropping out. there'd be sudden bursts of 200kb/s (when downloading something) and then it would go down to 100bps for a bit, then go back up again. can anyone think of a way to fix this as it gets very annoying!.

thanks

Hangdog42 · 10-22-2006, 04:39 PM

It sounds as if ndiswrapper is not real compatible with the Windows driver you're using. If your card is listed in the ndiswrapper wiki, use the driver they suggest. Otherwise, try downloading the latest XP driver from the manufacturers site and see if that behaves better.