You may want to connect via other means as possible and set up the urpmi sources.

I believe I've seen (though I'm not certain) the hostap utilities and firmware that he speaks of already set up for Mandrake on the repositories.

This would certainly make the whole process much easier!

Just went to Comp USA and asked a tech if he knew of any cards that worked right out of the box.
He told me the belkin f5d7000 worked. I looked at the card and it uses a broadcom chipset.

Looked at the cards Mandrake supports and I didn't see the chipset.

I didn't try and get it going with ndiswrapper. If I pay 50 for one I would like one that would run out of the box.

OPJOSE, did you say you had a card that used the broadcom chipset that was working?

If you know of a card that comes close to working out of the box let me know cause I think I will get another tomorrow if this one isn't easy to get going......

Are the usb ones any good ? Saw a netgear one that I might try next..
Thanks Charlie

Avoid the USB cards.

Any WiFi card with PRISM chipsets tends to work fine as there are native drivers for the Prism chipsets.

Yes my Laptop has a Broadcom WiFi adapter.

I've been able to get it to run via ndiswrapper... and it runs very well.

Note however that this is a suboptimal solution.

I really wish I had an adapter that was natively supported by Linux.

However I am glad that the ndiswrapper works so well with this card, and that all of the iwconfig commands seem to work.

This is the key. Iwconfig is used to configure and set up the card.

Some NDISWRAPPER supported cards do not seem to accept iwconfig commands very well.

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

Go to the above page and click on "WLAN Adapter Chipset Repository".

Download and open the html page in the rar file.

It lists which cards have which chipsets.

Remember that the Prism2 cards are supported "out of the box" if they do not require firmware preloads.

I took that card back and got a tech to find a card that has a good chance to work.

Got a netgear wg311t card. It uses the Atheros chipset. People have been getting it to work using the madwifi drivers.

I will play with it this weekend when I have a lot of time. My research has turned up the following information on how to get the card working.

I have already installed kernel source urpmi kernel-source

Load the madwifi drivers cd madwifi
make
Make install

Mandrake shows some madwifi drivers already installed but when i picked them it didn't seem to recognise them.

Load the drivers in order sbin/modprobe wlan
sbin/modprobe ath_ha1
sbin/modprobe ath_pci

check and/or edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-atho

Then add the line to /etc/modules.config
alias atho ath_pci

Does that look about right ?
ANything I should add or omit.
And it looks like this is the simple version.........

It looks right, though I am unfamiliar with that card and drivers.

The modprobe causes Linux to load the drivers just after the kernel load.

Another way of doing this is to alias the char device which represents the card.

The one minor advantage of this is that if the card is not installed (as in the case of a laptop) the kernel does not attempt to load the drivers anyway.

Thanks for the info ,
So if I'm reading you right I can do one or the other.
If I leave off the modprobe then I can add a line about the alias in the /etc/modules.config file and that will do the same thing.

Also, when I went into the MCC and tried to set up a wireless network there were the madwifi drivers. I picked them but I could get Mandrake to take them. Is there something I should have set up before going in and choosing the drivers? I thought since the drivers were there it would set itself up (or was hoping it would) <grin> .

I'll let you know if I get it working.

Thanks for all your help

Getting closer. As a matter of fact this is closer than I've ever been.

I got the Madwifi drivers loaded.

I have to load them manually for now.
modprobe wlan
modprobe ath_hal
modprobe ath_pci

I can type in ifconfig ath0 up. It does it.

But when I type in dhcpcd ath0 it says bash command not found.

I added the line ath_pci in the /etc/modules file
I had to make a file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ath0
I had several examples to compare.
I can't copy and paste it yet since im not connect to the internet...

I type iwconfig and it finds info from the ifcfg-ath0 file. example mode=master essid *.*
nickname bellsouth.net

I guess where I'm at now is I can't get it to take an IP from my router.
Drivers don't load automatically.

I guess this will be one step at a time..............
Thanks for the info so far
Charlie

FIrst with the modules loaded, type iwconfig

If you see that it reports a wireless device you are in the home stretch!

Let me know.

You will need ti urpmi one of the dhcp CLIENTS not servers.

Usually if iwconfig reports a device you can then edit or add the wlan interface via the MCC.

It should automatically install any required dhcp client pacakge for you when you tell it to use DHCP for the interface.

If not you can always urpmi dhcp-client and then configure the interface.

I would set it NOT to start at boot, btw.

I always have gkrellm running on my desktop with the WiFi monitor turned on.

I've set it to issue the "ifup wlan0" (on another laptop it's "ifup eth2"...) when the WiFi graph is pressed.

That way I have control over turning on the WiFi device.

Hey thanks a lot!!! I finally have it up and running now.
I have made some stupid mistakes. If I would have had a better knowledge of
Linux then configuring this card would have been a breeze.

I figured out why it wouldn't give me an IP

The file ifcfg-ath0 was never created.
I created a file ifcfg_ath0 in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. I used the contents
of someone else file . In the file it had mode = master instead of mode=managed.
MY BAD

Anyway, after many stupid mistakes it's up and running now.
MANY THANKS FOR YOU SUPPORT AND HELP.
I would have never figured it out without your help.
Thanks
Charlie

Hey great!

How about this one? Just dump all the wrapper Window emulator and hunt for driver complications and use a good ole D-Link Ethernet Bridge. cheap ethernet to wireless bridge? The D-Link DWL-810 or a newer 802.11g D-Link Bridge? Connect the Bridge to the PC by way of Ethernet, other end to wireless device and tell your browser to Configure the info such as your WEP key? My Mandrake 10.1 install found my Ethernet Card and the Desktop has an icon telling me connection is broken and I can click another icon to get configuration.

Wouldn't this give instant connect to the access point or router? Works for game systems, Xbox and Playstation.