Trying to load WARY on Thinkpad 385D
 

It stops after the second row of dots. (no line, then DONE in green)

So I went back to Puppy2.16 and booted fine. Puppy 2, though, had no wifi support.

So I tried Puppy 4.1. And it boots. But when I tried to enable the wireless card (a pcmcia wireless) the pup hangs.

So I tried 4.3. this stops nearly where WARY did. (different, but similar error)

I've been using "microcore" command line linux to run fdisk and create a usable swap partition, as I only have 80 MB of RAM. It now has about 1.4 GB of usable swap.

When I attempt to load Ndiswrapper in puppy, as the dialog appears that asks about the .INF file, it seems to hang. I can "ps" and "kill-9" the task, but it never gets past asking me for the driver.

The 4.3, the WARY, the SLACKO distros get hung up on the HDD, complaining about bad magic numbers or CHS entries. Windows and the earlier puppies do not seem to mind the vagaries of the HDD format.

Sorry, I've rambled on and on. Too much information is better than too little. At least until it approaches information overload.

I'd appreciate any info on either getting WARY to boot, or figuring out how to get Ndiswrapper to work in 4.1.


Thank you

not clear what you mean here, pretty sure 2.16 has wifi support, though maybe not the earliest 2x series

i had a 380ed (also 80mb ram) running 2x series (maybe even 3x) live cd with a save file including wifi,

there were very few pcmcia cards that would work wifi with that lap and pup combo, as my lap ran ran a 16 bit version card type 1 ..or something, been awhile,

i forget the details on those pcmcia cards, there were a bunch like type 1, 2 maybe even 3,
16 bit, 32 bit etc

bottom line in my searches at the time was that there were only 2 variants that were possible and i believe 1 used a oronco chip, netgear was one, maybe something like n-11 model

like i say, it was all awhile ago and if the murga forums ever come up, all the detailed info should be there, i think i used wifi drivers built into the pup OS, thus not requiring ndiswrapper

did alot of experimenting at the time but the details are pretty sketchy now,

a huge prob on my lap was no usb capability witch would have made wifi a piece of cake,

swap partition size recommendations at the time was generally a max of 2x available ram

Hello Jonyo.

Perhaps I misspoke.
The 2.16.may have had Wifi support; it wasn't obvious. There were however lots and lots of supported dialup modems.

I believe that PUPPEEE (my first exposure to Puppy) was a 3 series. It was the one that convinced me that this would be the way to go. It worked flawlessly on my tiny EEE-PC.

I'm running Slacko on desktop as well-- it has a wired Ethernet connection; not a problem.

Back to the matter at hand, though. The 4.1 boots and mounts my hard drive. But when I try "Connect" it doesn't see the D-link DWL-650 WiFi adapter. Yes, it's an old 8-bit PCMCIA adapter, and I guard it with my life. I have the driver disk, though, and I had hoped to use Ndiswrapper with it. Ndiswrapper is still a bit unstable in 4.1, it seems. When I try to use it, it hangs.

The process is:
Connect
Add Driver
Select the NDiswrapper tab
some kerchunking on the CD Drive and an explanation about finding the .INF file and a search page.
There is a message that the "last directory was not found" and I click OK
(this may be the problem. I don't know.)
Then the dialog/query -- to locate the .INF file shows up.

--->>> at this point the connect routine hangs <<<<<<<<<<----


there seems to be a dialog about "finding the INF" on the screen, but the connect script is stuck. Puppy is still alive, though. I can start a console and using PS, I can find the script. When I kill the script puppy is alive and kicking. I can do nearly anything else, but if I try to "connect" again, the exact same thing happens.



Perhaps I'm not waiting long enough. I lost patience after about 3 minutes.

Also, the screen about finding the driver was no longer refreshing. this made me believe it was hung.

It might be useful to add the driver to the puppy filesystem before I start. I don't know where it should go. Or point the "last directory" to a real directory.

I'm suspecting that I have a "not ready for prime time" Ndiswrapper... is there a more capable place to get a puppy friendly one that is more up to date? Or any other clue you can give me? (Yes, I'm pretty clueless)

I'm quite impressed with Puppy, and I'd hoped that Wary would be my salvation. I'll be happy when the 4.1 barks wirelessly, though.

I apologize. I'm quoting most error messages/puppy versions/part numbers from imperfect memory. The DWL-650 is correct, it is sitting right here. I know it works, windows finds it, and connects with it. But the best windows can do is be windows.

Thank you.

How are you running Puppy 4.1?

Frugal or Full Install?

Have you edited /boot/grub/menu.lst with the pfix=noram option like mine

So Puppy does not run in ram and bog down when you try to run ndiswrapper.

Just some more info needed in this thread.

Edit: Forgot to mention. What size is your /swap partition and is it turned on also. Also. Tuxxes 2.14X which is current should have maybe the drivers for your card out of the box Maybe.

Hello Rokytnji.

I haven't actually worked on the system today; it's recovering from turkey.

But I'm not "installed" yet-- I've been running off CD.

I have a swap partition about 1.5 GB, and during boot puppy finds it and does a "swapon" to it. When I go to the console and type "free" there is over a gig still unused. While running, the display of remaining ram shows approximately 339 Meg free. (lower right next to the battery monitor and the usage graph.)

I have a 2 GB ext2 partition, let me try to install there and I'll use the CD to boot puppy. I'll use the "cheat codes" that you used for the grub install and hopefully I'll see a difference. I'm not going to fiddle with the boot sector until I get something running because I'm trying to preserve the WIN98 that already exists on the system.
Let me check this and I'll report back.
Thank you for the direction to attempt.