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How to Install Netgear WG511 v. 2 PC Card under Fedora Core 4 (on Thinkpad A31)
I am running Fedora Core 4 (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4) on a Thinkpad A31. I am new to Linux, and I have been trying for months to get a wireless card working. I bought a Netgear WG511 v2 (made in China), because I heard it was widely compatible. Can anybody give me an outline of the steps I need to follow? FYI, I have never compiled a kernel or used PC cards under Linux. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
ASKER
Thank you for the post. One quick question before I start. The website you reference in #2 states the driver works for "Atheros chipsets". I was told the WG511 v2 card from Netgear has a PRISM chipset. Do you have the same card as I do? Are you sure MADWIFI supports WG511? thanks again, Carsten
Give a try ,I think it should work. If it doesn't work ,you can easily uninstall the packages " rpm -e <package name>" ...After installation see if you get any error messages in /var/log/messages
ASKER
Sundeep, thank you for the help. I am stuck on STEP 2. The output from "uname -a" is below:
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 #1 Thu Jun 2 22:55:56 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
There appears to be no "madwifi-kmdl-" rpm that matches my kernel. Is that correct? What can I do?
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 #1 Thu Jun 2 22:55:56 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
There appears to be no "madwifi-kmdl-" rpm that matches my kernel. Is that correct? What can I do?
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ASKER
Thank you for the instructions. Sorry for taking so long to reply, but I was traveling on business. I followed all your steps, and it still doesn't work. Here are some facts:
1.) I got the firmware add-on, and the /lib/firmware directory existed already. The firmware.agent file already pointed to this directory.
2.) When I ran "chkconfig --list | grep pcmcia", I got the following:
pcmcia 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
One thing that is peculiar is that the card doesn't even appear to be powered. No lights. No sound from my Thinkpad that PC cards are running. I get that sound under Windows, and the card runs fine under Windows. Is this a potential problem?
3.) Here is the output from lsmod:
Module Size Used by
radeon 76609 1
drm 70101 2 radeon
parport_pc 28933 1
lp 13001 0
parport 40585 2 parport_pc,lp
autofs4 29253 2
rfcomm 42333 0
l2cap 30661 5 rfcomm
bluetooth 56133 4 rfcomm,l2cap
sunrpc 167813 1
pcmcia 29025 4
video 15941 0
ibm_acpi 15997 0
button 6609 0
battery 9413 0
ac 4805 0
md5 4033 1
ipv6 268097 8
yenta_socket 21449 3
rsrc_nonstatic 12737 1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core 50909 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_n onstatic
uhci_hcd 35152 0
shpchp 94405 0
hw_random 5973 0
i2c_i801 8781 0
i2c_core 21569 1 i2c_i801
snd_intel8x0m 19589 0
snd_intel8x0 34689 1
snd_ac97_codec 75961 2 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0
snd_seq_dummy 3653 0
snd_seq_oss 37057 0
snd_seq_midi_event 9153 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 62289 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss, snd_seq_mi di_event
snd_seq_device 8781 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss, snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 51185 0
snd_mixer_oss 17857 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 100169 4 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0 ,snd_ac97_ codec,snd_ pcm_oss
snd_timer 33605 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 57157 12 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0 ,snd_ac97_ codec,snd_ seq_oss,sn d_seq,snd_ seq_device ,snd_pcm_o ss,snd_mix er_oss,snd _pcm,snd_t imer
soundcore 10913 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 9669 3 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0 ,snd_pcm
e100 47297 0
mii 5441 1 e100
floppy 65269 0
dm_snapshot 17413 0
dm_zero 2113 0
dm_mirror 26029 0
ext3 132553 2
jbd 86233 1 ext3
dm_mod 58101 6 dm_snapshot,dm_zero,dm_mir ror
Any ideas?
1.) I got the firmware add-on, and the /lib/firmware directory existed already. The firmware.agent file already pointed to this directory.
2.) When I ran "chkconfig --list | grep pcmcia", I got the following:
pcmcia 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
One thing that is peculiar is that the card doesn't even appear to be powered. No lights. No sound from my Thinkpad that PC cards are running. I get that sound under Windows, and the card runs fine under Windows. Is this a potential problem?
3.) Here is the output from lsmod:
Module Size Used by
radeon 76609 1
drm 70101 2 radeon
parport_pc 28933 1
lp 13001 0
parport 40585 2 parport_pc,lp
autofs4 29253 2
rfcomm 42333 0
l2cap 30661 5 rfcomm
bluetooth 56133 4 rfcomm,l2cap
sunrpc 167813 1
pcmcia 29025 4
video 15941 0
ibm_acpi 15997 0
button 6609 0
battery 9413 0
ac 4805 0
md5 4033 1
ipv6 268097 8
yenta_socket 21449 3
rsrc_nonstatic 12737 1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core 50909 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_n
uhci_hcd 35152 0
shpchp 94405 0
hw_random 5973 0
i2c_i801 8781 0
i2c_core 21569 1 i2c_i801
snd_intel8x0m 19589 0
snd_intel8x0 34689 1
snd_ac97_codec 75961 2 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0
snd_seq_dummy 3653 0
snd_seq_oss 37057 0
snd_seq_midi_event 9153 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 62289 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,
snd_seq_device 8781 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,
snd_pcm_oss 51185 0
snd_mixer_oss 17857 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 100169 4 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0
snd_timer 33605 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 57157 12 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0
soundcore 10913 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 9669 3 snd_intel8x0m,snd_intel8x0
e100 47297 0
mii 5441 1 e100
floppy 65269 0
dm_snapshot 17413 0
dm_zero 2113 0
dm_mirror 26029 0
ext3 132553 2
jbd 86233 1 ext3
dm_mod 58101 6 dm_snapshot,dm_zero,dm_mir
Any ideas?
ASKER
Another update...
(1) I called Netgear and gave them the card's serial number & specs. They told me the chipset is "Intersil/Frisbee" -- not PRISM. However, I have seen on several websites that Frisbee and Prism are compatible/indentical. One more wrinkle: when I run "lspci", it says "Ethernet Controller: Marvell Technology Group LTD.: Unknown device 1faa. This leads me to believe the chipset is actually by Marvell. Clearly NetGear is no help at all. They suck.
(2) I decided to trust the output from "lspci", so I started installing ndiswrapper. NDISWRAPPER compiled fine, but I keep getting "invalid driver" when I try to load the driver using: "ndiswrapper -i WG511v2.INF".
(3) This leaves me with a card that is still not running, and I'm not sure where to go next. I have now decided to blow away my entire installation. I am going to install Fedora Core 5 (in the hopes that it might even identify the cards out-of-the-box). If it does not, I will try installing NDISWRAPPER again.
Any thoughts would be very appreciated. Thanks, Carsten
(1) I called Netgear and gave them the card's serial number & specs. They told me the chipset is "Intersil/Frisbee" -- not PRISM. However, I have seen on several websites that Frisbee and Prism are compatible/indentical. One more wrinkle: when I run "lspci", it says "Ethernet Controller: Marvell Technology Group LTD.: Unknown device 1faa. This leads me to believe the chipset is actually by Marvell. Clearly NetGear is no help at all. They suck.
(2) I decided to trust the output from "lspci", so I started installing ndiswrapper. NDISWRAPPER compiled fine, but I keep getting "invalid driver" when I try to load the driver using: "ndiswrapper -i WG511v2.INF".
(3) This leaves me with a card that is still not running, and I'm not sure where to go next. I have now decided to blow away my entire installation. I am going to install Fedora Core 5 (in the hopes that it might even identify the cards out-of-the-box). If it does not, I will try installing NDISWRAPPER again.
Any thoughts would be very appreciated. Thanks, Carsten
ASKER
Resolved -- sort of.
This problem took way too much of my time. In the end, I went to the following website: http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_alles.php?
I looked for a card that has PRISM54 GT chipset. I found SMC 2835W was the cheapest at a local store. I followed your instructions regarding PRISM.
Thank you very much, Sundeep Gopal, for all the help.
This problem took way too much of my time. In the end, I went to the following website: http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_alles.php?
I looked for a card that has PRISM54 GT chipset. I found SMC 2835W was the cheapest at a local store. I followed your instructions regarding PRISM.
Thank you very much, Sundeep Gopal, for all the help.
1)Go to ATrpm (http://atrpms.net/dist/fc4/madwifi/) and download madwifi-0.9.6.0-18.rhfc4.a
2) Now search the ATrpm Fedora driver list (http://atrpms.net/dist/fc4/madwifi/) and make sure you get the correct rpm to match ur kernel "uname -a". madwifi-kmdl-2.6.11-1.1369
3) reboot the system
4) Go to Desktop in your FC4 top panel. Select "System settings" then "Network". Type in your root password when asked and you will be taken to graphic menu that will list your network cards. In my case my laptop has an ethernet card and the wireless card. Until I installed Madwifi as described above the wireless card was not listed.
5) The wireless card is now listed under "Devices", in my case under the ethernet card. Check the box to the left next of the wireless card and press the "Activate" button.
6) When you go to leave the network menu you will be asked to save the new settings. Press OK. You're almost there.
7) Restart your computer.