Installed Fedora on my laptop, it right away identified my pcmcia card. It works very well
until I turn on the WEP. It is Prism2 based Belkin F5D6020 card.

Then I installed 3 of linux-wlan-ng packages: base, modules and pcmcia. It installed
without a hitch.

Configured the files /etc/wlan/wlan.conf and /etc/wlan/wlancfg-MYLAN ( MYLAN is ESSID)

Here is the problem, whenever I run 'service pcmcia start;, the damn thing loads
orinoco_cs, orinoco and hermes modules. And this in turn is set to bring up 'eth0' interface.
It should instead load prism2_cs and related modules and bring up 'wlan0' interface.

/etc/modules.conf has alias 'wlan0 prism2_cs'

There are no references to ifcfg-ethX , only ifcfg-wlan0 is there.

Finally, I forceably run 'ifup wlan0', this is error I get,
prism2_cs device wlan0 does not seem to be present. delaying initialization.

Please some one help, I can get everything to work under XP. So the card and router are
working properly. If someone could explain how pcmcia loads 'eth0' instead of 'wlan0' it would go a long way in figuring this one out.

Thanks.

Have you tried manually loading the modules before starting the service?

Yes I have loaded the modules manually. I boot into in a single user mode, then start
the pcmcia services, which loads orinoco_cs, orinoco and hermes, pcmcia_core, ds
and yenta_socket modules.

At this point iwconfig commands show 'eth0' interface, I wanted to see 'wlan0' at this
point. Nevertheless, I stop the network services, unload the orinoco related modules,
then load the prism2_cs related modules. prism2_cs, p80211 are loaded.

After they load, without any errors, I run 'ifup wlan0', I get the following error:
prism2_cs device wlan0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.

Sorry could not copy and paste the output for obviously reasons.

OK. Have you tried doing a ifconfig wlan0 up before loading any networking modules whatsoever? In other words don't start the pcmcia service. If that goes without errors try a dhclient wlan0. If that doesn't work then do a dhclient wlan0 without the ifconfig wlan0 up.

I get the following with modules (prism2_cs, p80211, ds, yenta_socket, pcmcia_core)
loaded

# ifconfig wlan0 up
wlan0: unknown interface: No such device

#dhclient wlan0
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
wlan0: unknown interface: No such device
Bind socket to interface: No such device

The following without any modules loaded:

# ifconfig wlan0 up
insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2115.nptl/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ds.o; init_module; Operation not permitted.
insmod: Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more info in syslog or dmesg
insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2115.nptl/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ds.o: insmod wlan0 failed.
wlan0: unknown interface. No such device

I get similar results when I run dhclient wlan0.

i got it working with wep, i will post what i did after doing some more tests.

In the /etc/pcmcia/config file, 0x156 is Vendor Id and 0x0002 is Device Id:

card "Intersil PRISM2 11 Mbps Wireless Adapter"
manfid 0x0156, 0x0002
bind "prism2_cs" <--- was orinoco_cs, i replaced it with prism2_cs

I added the following lines too:

device "prism2_cs"
class "wlan-ng" module "prism2_cs"

Then, use README to edit the following files to suit your environment
/etc/wlan/wlan.cfg and /etc/wlan/wlancfg-MYESSID

Contents of wlan.cfg
========================
WLAN_DEVICES="wlan0"
ChannelList="01:02:03:04:05:06:07:08:09:0a:0b:00:00:00"
# Below is the min and max time we linger on a channel during a scan.
ChannelMinTime=200
ChannelMaxTime=250
# And here we have the master scan toggle.
WLAN_SCAN=n
SSID_wlan0="MYESSID"
ENABLE_wlan0=y

Contents of wlancfg-MYESSID
=========================
lnxreq_hostWEPEncrypt=true # true|false
lnxreq_hostWEPDecrypt=true # true|false
dot11PrivacyInvoked=true # true|false
dot11WEPDefaultKeyID=0 # 0|1|2|3
dot11ExcludeUnencrypted=true # true|false, in AP this means WEP is required.

# If PRIV_GENSTR is not empty, use PRIV_GENTSTR to generate
# keys (just a convenience)
# add-ons/ in the tarball contains other key generators.
PRIV_GENERATOR=/sbin/nwepgen # nwepgen, Neesus compatible
PRIV_KEY128=true # keylength to generate
PRIV_GENSTR=""

# or set them explicitly. Set genstr or keys, not both.
dot11WEPDefaultKey0=78:C0:E8:48:AE:67:02:1E:0E:BA:FE:25:BC
dot11WEPDefaultKey1=
dot11WEPDefaultKey2= # e.g. 01:20:03:40:05 or
dot11WEPDefaultKey3= #
#=======SELECT STATION MODE===================
IS_ADHOC=n # y|n, y - adhoc, n - infrastructure
>o<--- the rest have been snipped --->o<

Then create ifcfg-wlan0 using redhat-config-network-gui tool or vi.
Then run 'service pcmcia restart'.
Of course, to get an IP from your router, the passwords have to match.

Happy surfing.