i've been struggling to get my linksys WMP11 (pci w/ prism 2.5 wavelan chipset) to communicate w/ my netgear MR814 wireless hub. i'm running slackware 9.0 w/ a the OEM bare.i kernel.

the interface eth0 appears to come ok on boot, but i can't communicate w/ the router via DHCP correctly. when i try to use dhclient to contact the router, it gives me the following:

Listening on Socket/eth0
Sending on Socket/eth0
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 21
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

in addition to this, i get the following in dmesg:

...
hermes.c: 5 Apr 2002 David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
orinoco.c 0.11b (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:0b.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:07.2
Detected Orinoco/Prism2 PCI device at 00:0b.0, mem:0xD9000000 to 0xD9000FFF -> 0
xd185d000, irq:11
Reset done......................................................................
................................................................................
................................................................................
.......;
Clear Reset.....................................................................
................................................................................
...............................................................................
................................................................................
................................................................................
;
pci_cor : reg = 0x0 - 49F - 46D
eth0: Station identity 001f:0002:0001:0004
eth0: Looks like an Intersil firmware version 1.04
eth0: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth0: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth0: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth0: MAC address 00:06:25:09:42:8D
eth0: Station name "Prism I"
eth0: ready

...(stuff not related to ethernet card)...

eth0: Channel out of range (0)!
eth0: Channel out of range (0)!
eth0: error -5 reading info frame. Frame dropped.

when the commands ifconfig and iwconfig are issued, the following is displayed (respectively):

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:06:25:09:42:8D
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:4743 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:23 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:256122 (250.1 Kb) TX bytes:9108 (8.8 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xd000 Memory:d9000000-d9000fff

eth0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"NETGEAR" Nickname:"Prism I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: 00:09:5B:52:36:52
Bit Rate:11Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:92/92 Signal level:-10 dBm Noise level:-149 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

the ESSID of eth0 being "NETGEAR" makes me suspect that the router may actually be communicating w/ the card, but in some manner that is unknown to me.

also, i have IRQ sharing issues on bootup that will sometimes freeze the computer. to fix this, i was thinking of removing the sound card and rebooting.

any suggestions are welcome! i've wasted so much time w/ this, somebody plz respond.

ok, i've now fiddled w/ both wlan-ng and the modules for prism2 cards that come w/ the 2.4.20/21 kernel. my conclusion is that there is some problem with dropping frames.

my reasoning for this is as follows: i compiled the 2.4.21 kernel w/ none of the modules for prism2 support and the card was unacknowledged (as expected); then i installed wlan-ng and got an error message in dmesg that was similar to the one issued when i was loading the prism2 modules that come w/ the kernel; the error messages are as follows:

ident: nic h/w: id=0x8013 1.0.0
ident: pri f/w: id=0x15 1.1.0
ident: sta f/w: id=0x1f 1.4.2
MFI:SUP:role=0x00:id=0x01:var=0x01:b/t=1/1
CFI:SUP:role=0x00:id=0x02:var=0x02:b/t=1/1
PRI:SUP:role=0x00:id=0x03:var=0x01:b/t=4/4
STA:SUP:role=0x00:id=0x04:var=0x01:b/t=1/9
PRI-CFI:ACT:role=0x01:id=0x02:var=0x02:b/t=1/1
STA-CFI:ACT:role=0x01:id=0x02:var=0x02:b/t=1/1
STA-MFI:ACT:role=0x01:id=0x01:var=0x01:b/t=1/1
Prism2 card SN: 0123456789\x00\x00
hfa384x_copy_to_bap4: copy_to_bap() failed.
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.

has anybody seen this? i only found 1 link when searching for "frame dropped" on google.... damn, i think i'm gonna have to get ANOTHER wireless card.