DLink DWL-120+ -- inconsistent and 'non'persistent

[rich pearl]

Puppy 2.14, Pentium Celeron 2.4g mhz, 128mb, no swap, running off the live CD.

the drivers are from the DLink site -- had to download version 1.01 instead of 1.02, because where the former came zipped, the latter came as a single setup file. used ndiswrapper on the /XP/tiacxusb.inf file to make the module, then ran WAG, got online and placed the following lines in rc.local:

modprobe ndiswrapper
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0
rm /etc/dhcpc/*.pid 2>/dev/null
dhcpcd -t 30 -h puppypc -d wlan0

it all looked to be routine. however, on rebooting i discovered i am neither able to create a persistent setup, nor does it always find the device. on those occasions when it does, i must run 'modprobe ndiswrapper' and then RutilT to connect to the profile i created. btw, though there are two open networks in the house, scanning reveals none.

fwiw, i'm a relative newcomer to the ways of Linux, and not really sure what to do next. i had no luck finding posts regarding this particular wireless. any suggestions? need more info? should i post the contents of dmesg?

just want to say one thing! i've had some success on another machine using the Netgear WG121 with ndiswrapper -- and that's prolly cuz' these forums are a virtual treasure chest of knowledge. my thanks to ALL


rich

[tempestuous]

1. WAG is deprecated. All of its features are now contained in the more comprehensive Network Wizard. The Network Wizard will allow you to save your configuration.

2. Now that Puppy has expanded native wifi driver support, the bulky workaround methods of ndiswrapper are no longer necessary for most wifi devices.
Your DWL-120+ is supported by the "acx" driver.

[rich pearl]

tempestuous,

i used the Network wizard to load the acx driver. now on boot it sees the card, but still fails to get an IP address. nor does it find the network upon testing wlan0.

i'm at a loss as to what i do next. is there something simple i'm missing? that's usually the case. seems it's the easy things that are often the hardest.

unfortunately, i'm not going to have a chance to work on this problem for a couple days.

fortunately -- for me, that is, because this is my niece's computer -- ndiswrapper worked fine after i modprobed it and used WAG to toggle DHCP. thus was i able to leave her online.

**phwew!! been my experience that relatives, in my case brothers and sis-in-laws, do not brook failure well. **

thanks

rich

[tempestuous]

Sometimes there are problems loading firmware. Check "dmesg" to see if this is the situation. Often the output of dmesg is so large that the line buffer in rxvt will not display it all, so do this -

rxvt -sl 1000
dmesg

Look for acx-related messages. All going well, the ACX driver should load the firmware file "tiacx100usb" which should be found in /lib/firmware
Maybe you should check to see that the firmware file definitely exists there.