Broadband Wireless

flagpole

hi,
i was hoping if someone could help me. im a complete newbie to linux.
i have installed a copy of Red hat 9 on a p3 800, 384 mb ram, 10 gb hdd.
i have 2 usb network cards
a belkin (product code F5D7050 ) and a linksys WUSB54GP.

i have had a look on the web for instructions on how to get one of these working.
seems i will have to download something called ndiswrapper and install it.

do i then import the windows driver (is that the correct terminology)?

i was wondering if anyone had a step by step set of instructions on how to do this? or perhaps a website with same?
a couple of baords that came up in my search seemed promising until i got to the post where the people involved gave up

the setting up of the network side of things looks straight forward enuf, its the installing the driver for one of these cards is stumping me (like i say ..complete newbie).

thanks for your help.
FP

ChityWest

This is the best place for info on it that I know of .

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

The Belkin FD one is using the BCM4318 chipset (the one that calls itself Air Force One).

You need the exact pci id of the card and the revision number - you can get this from 'lspci -v'. If your card box says FD****UK then its a slightly different card. Some of them work straight away and some dont. The location of the windows drivers you use is crucial here too - some will not be recognised at all. Some will work for a minute or two before locking your system. You need the exact right driver for your exact card (going by the pci-id ie 14e4:4138). You may also need to try different Ndiswrapper versions.

The above link has a link to the listed cards wikki which is pretty useful. Also the ndiswrapper installation instructions.

Good luck and write back how you got on.

flagpole

Thanks for the info Chitywest. Ill have a look at that and see how i get on.

im sure once i do this once or twice it wont see so complicated.

when i look at the hardware browser it lists the belkin 54g usb , so i guess that a good sign. it just doesnt seem to pick it up as one of the network devices when trying to set up the wireless network.

in fact just getting to grips with the file manager in linux is interesting. i have 2 hard drives in the machine, both listed in the hardware browser, i just cant figure out where to find the files (mp3's) on the second one.

its all good though, as i say, it'll get better with practice

FP

ChityWest

flagpole wrote:

Thanks for the info Chitywest. Ill have a look at that and see how i get on.

im sure once i do this once or twice it wont see so complicated.

when i look at the hardware browser it lists the belkin 54g usb , so i guess that a good sign. it just doesnt seem to pick it up as one of the network devices when trying to set up the wireless network.

in fact just getting to grips with the file manager in linux is interesting. i have 2 hard drives in the machine, both listed in the hardware browser, i just cant figure out where to find the files (mp3's) on the second one.

its all good though, as i say, it'll get better with practice

FP

Hi - I misread your original post and thought that you had the F5D7001. As its the usb one that you have and not the PCI card then I gave you incorrect info about the chipset - so apologies about that.

Does your distro correctly recognise the usb device and not show any other 'phantom' or unknown devices ?

Do you have 'Linux Wireless Tools' installed ?
(http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html)

If so what output do you get from
iwconfig

This link here also gives the commands for configuring your wireless card as the wlan0 device:

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Installation

The Ndiswrapper instructions should still work though.

flagpole

Hi Chitywest,
yeah the hardware list seems to see the usb card allright. i found the adaptor im using on the list you gave me. ill try it tomorrow and see how it goes (fingers crossed!!!)

thanks again
FP

nadir

I'll take this oppertunity to say, If anyone is thinking of getting a wireless card. I got this one recently .

Netgear WG311T 108Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter

and it rocks my socks, uses the madwifi driver, and has FULL support.
Only costs about 50 bucks too, which is well decent.

flagpole

hi all,
thanks for the advice so far.
i had a go at ndiswrapper but it didnt seem to work.

i had a look at my kernal ver. and it is 2.4.20-8, where ndiswraper seems to work for 2.6.6 or 2.4.26 according to the info on the site.

i tried the last 3 versions of ndiswrapper (11,12,13) and the info for all of these states you need 2.6.6 or 2.4.26.

can anyone suggest a program like wrapper that supports my kernal?
thanks,
FP

Stephen

Would you consider installing a more recent distribution? Red Hat 9 is pretty ancient. Newer distros will have 2.6.* kernels from the get go.

flagpole

i definately would , will i have to download the entire o.s. again?
failing that is there a version of ndiswrapper compatible with my distro?
thx,
FP

Cormic

You could also get Ubuntu sent to you for free. It will probably take a while however.

https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

Stephen

Ubuntu and Suse come with drivers for a bunch of wireless cards built in too, so you mightn't even have to go messing with ndiswrapper. Dunno about the other distros as I haven't played with them much.

ChityWest

nadir wrote:

I'll take this oppertunity to say, If anyone is thinking of getting a wireless card. I got this one recently .

Netgear WG311T 108Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter

and it rocks my socks, uses the madwifi driver, and has FULL support.
Only costs about 50 bucks too, which is well decent.

I would agree on that one - I have one system using ndiswrapper on ipw2100without any probs. And another (different card) where it point blank refused to do anything other than lock hard after working for up to 2 minutes web browsing.

The wg311t 108 mbps wireless pci adapter is a doddle to get working with madwifi.