Wireless G on Linux
 

Hey dudes....

I'm looking to compile a list of WORKING wireless G cards for Suse that can be installed by the Novice without too much hassle.

It would be great if anyone who has experience of doing this would contribute by way of a guide of script examples for installing and initializing cards (especially Wireless G).

I'm a primarily a windblows user right now and have no end of trouble getting my Wireless G card to work on Suse ( DLink G650+ if your interested ), well it doesn't work.

So unless I want to stick with windows (which I REALLY don't) or buy a new card (which I might but I need to know which card to buy and I can't seem to find anywhere that still sells 802.11b cards) I'll have to keep plodding away with windblows until I can find a supported card.

If anyone posts could you list your card details, Manufacturer, model, chipset rev, steps taken to install, configuration (including any scripting u done).

Look forward to your posts.

Cheers

J

Hmmmm.

Hey johnny,

Have you checked out ndiswrapper?

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/List

lists your card there as working on Slackware from version 0.8 and the ndiswrapper project is now pre-release at 0.11 which is what I'm using right now. If you're interested in what will work out of the box, i suggest you check each distro's HCL page for wireless cards that work straight away. They are few and far between. There is also the linuxant driver loader but I found this more trouble than it was worth for the trial and so did not pay for the money. ndiswrapper is free :) and has been getting good reviews. With linux it is simply not going to be as simple as Windows however as long as you follow the install instructions and make sure you have wireless tools installed along with the kernel-source (both can be installed without much hassle using rpmdrake in rpm-based distros) then you should be laughing. For your info my card is a belkin f5d7000 which works fine with MDK10.1 (as well as Suse 9.1 as far as I understand) because it uses the broadcom 94306 chipset. The same goes for the PCMCIA version (f5D7010). Both are 802.11g.

Regards
Chris

Cheers
Chris...I'll check out NDIS wrapper tonight :-)

Re: Wireless G on Linux
 

I've got the DWL G520. Anyway, I had a dang hard time getting it to work under FC2, but was finally able to using the Madwifi driver. I'm not sure if it'll work for the 650+, but I'd give it a look. Read the FAQ for info on finding the right driver for you here: http://www.mattfoster.clara.co.uk/madwifi-faq.htm. I also found this other website: http://www.mattfoster.clara.co.uk/madwifi-faq.htm which has info on a lot of wireless drivers available for Linux.

a lot of dlink cards are a problem. They change their chipsets a LOT.

Any card that uses the Prism54 drivers is going to work out of the box, because they are in the kernel. This includes primarily cards with the PrismGT chipset. You can google a bit to see what cards this includes, I can tell you that the Netgear511 PCMCIA card is one of these, I have been using it in Slackware for months with Prism54.

Note that ndiswrapper is available as a SuSE RPM via YaST. At least, as of 9.1 it is.

yup and also MDK 10.1 C comes with ndiswrapper 0.9.

But given that this is the SUSE forum...

*eltrohc*

Thanks for the replies Dudes....I'll give the ndiswrapper another try (first attempt on Suse9.1 failed cos it couldn't find my build dir...but it is there as a link in /lib/modules)

Cheers

J

WG511
 

I have a Netgear WG511 and it works awesome. Configuration is easy. I am running SuSe 9.1 Pro. Just plug the card in. Do a YOU update. (Must be hard wired for this) Choose the Madwifi drivers. Download the drivers. Log off and then back on. The Green light will come on. Open Console. Log in as root. Type in "ifconfig essid hooters eth0 or eth1 or wlan0 or wlan1. You may have to do this several times. Then you will see your card is up and running. My laptop runs awesome. When I start up my computer I just su to root and enter my network info and up and running.

Later

:p

Re: WG511
 

Madwifi are for Atheros cards i thought? that must be what the other WG511 uses. Confusingly, it appears the Taiwan-made model is PrismGT, and the Chinese-made is something else...sounds like its Atheros.

Btw, you might try writing a simple shellscript to start your network interface, instead of always typing the same things. This is especially nice if you've got a WEP key and don't always remember it. All you need to do is create a text file with each command in a seperate line, and make sure that file is executable. For example I have homeNetwork.sh, which looks like:

iwconfig eth1 key ********
dhcpcd eth1

Its probably a good idea to set this script to not be readable by anyone other than root. There are also ways of changing your boot-up scripts so that they do this when activating your interface. I use several different networks throughout the day, so i find it easier to have a seperate script for each network, and not have to worry about remembering different keys and such :)

Re: Re: WG511
 

All of that is configurable through YaST. There is no need to create scripts.

If your card uses a prism chipset, all you need do is copy the firmware to /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/ and the card will work flawlessly. The firmware is included with the Win drivers, it's a .asm file. rename it to isl3890 and copy it to the above directory. With my SMC 2835W, that's all I had to do for either Mandrake 10, FC2, or SUSE 9.1. Check out www.prism54.org for more info.

Hi;

I got the Cisco Aironet-350 ($130.00) 802.11b wireless PC card adaptor, it work with my dual boot(W2k and SuSE 9.1 pro.) IBM thinkpad out of the box.

I have an Xterasys XG-600 mini-PCI in my laptop, and did the same as this. It's working fine. I think they also have the firmware available for download via that site now.

BTW - if you're using 9.1, do an online update. The prism drivers were added to kernel 2.6.5 series. The original 9.1 was 2.6.4 series and would not work if you have a prism based card - well, not as easily ;)

I dual boot with WinXP, and have constant problems with wireless in WinXP
:rolleyes: when I am forced to boot into it.