Hello, I'm trying to setup this said PCMCIA wifi card under Slackware 10.2 notebook with madwifi driver, but first I'm curious to know that -

When you plug in the card and turn on the notebook, is it nesessary that the ACT light must eluminates to show the unit has been turned on? Since mine does not. So I'm curious if there's anything wrong.
Or it would eluminates only to show that wireless signal is presents once it is correctly setup. Thanks.

The very next thing I'm uncertain is what chipset is this card based on? The model is

D-link Airplus Extreme DWL-G650 108 Mbps, Hardware Version C3, Firmware 4.30 (made in China),

since some web states that it is Arthero based while otherwise said it is Texsus Instrument. And unfortunatly nether the manual, the box or D-link website mention about the chipset.

I just googled it and returned Atheros/ADMTek/Prism54 and even Intel (which is definately not right)...
i have a DWL-122 (USB) and i also had similar results when looking.. a lot of the manufactures seem to release different versions of the same card. look for a site with Firmware --> chipset info - thats what i had to do...
Mine turned out to be Realtek rt2570 chip,

with the lights - i have a Prism2 based PCMCIA card as well and if i plug it into this laptop with the build i have at the moment no lights come on ever (becuase i have PCMCIA support disabled,, =)
On a live CD that is enabled the lights dont come on until i issue a command,, something like #ifconfig wlan0 up .
hope this helps...

Here's a way to ID the chipset

1. Run "/sbin/lspci -v |grep Wireless"

You'll get something like this:

03:03.0 Network Controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2200BG (Rev 05)

All you're interested is the first part that tells where the device is on the bus. In my case 03:03.0. Next:

2. "/sbin/lspci -n 03:03.0"

You'll get something like this:

03.03.0 Class 0280 8086:4220 (Rev 5)

The 8086:4220 part IDs the chipset manufacturer. In my case the manufacturer is Intel.

3. Now go to http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...index.php/List and look for chipset ID you discovered above. It will tell you exactly what driver you need to download and give you a link to it.

Also, check the manufacturer's website (in my case, Intel) as they may have better ready-made drivers and instructions on how to install them.

In some cases your need firmware as well. Since wifi cards are transmitters and share the spectrum with other services the manufacturer may be required to certify that the card can not interfer. That's why we have to jump through some hoops to get the cards to work.

Dennisk

I know what the problem is, since I'm using kernel 2.6.13, my card isn't even detected. As clearly stated in http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/util...cia/howto.html

I'm trying to follow their solution.