Some Wi fi issues

Booting, installing, newbie
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jonyo

#21 Post by jonyo »

Well, I'm very happy to say that I've managed to get this lap (gateway m520) up & running wifi with the onboard bcm card & 2.15CE. :D

Originally, I used 2.12 (& or 3..forget) & I think I got it to go wifi with ndiswrapper. Unless someone can correct me in that there were drivers that came with those earlier pup ver that would auto load a BCM wifi card.

Unfortunately, when I upgraded to 2.15 CE, not sure what happened but I lost everything. I thought I'd backed up my save file before starting the upgrade but I didn't double check & it must have been on another lap.

Spent quite awhile yesterday trying to get the wifi goin but 2.15CE is diff from the earlier vers mentioned in that bmc43xx loads auto on boot. I then found that I needed to add the firmware fix. In the end, ran into nothing but problems.

Started fresh today running 2.15CE in ram & to make a longer story short, I'm able to run 2.15CE with the onboard BCM card by unloading the native bmc43xx driver that auto loads on boot & loading the winx driver with ndiswrapper. :D Rock solid connection.

It could be that it may work with the bcm43xx driver, but I realized I didn't have the firmware fix handy so tried the other way & it worked. Also managed to get the wifi goin without using rutilt..for the first time.
Last edited by jonyo on Thu 05 Jul 2007, 19:58, edited 2 times in total.
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macewan
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Joined: Tue 10 Apr 2007, 02:00

#22 Post by macewan »

I am going to buy a USB wireless adapter to see if that works for me. If not, I guess I will have wasted $45 since the onboard wireless adapter that is built into my laptop works fine in Windows Vista.

If that doesn't let me get online with Puppy, I will have to give up. Thanks for trying to help so far.

Here is the one I'm buying tomorrow:
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/D-Link-W ... tDetail.do
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jonyo

#23 Post by jonyo »

I think that wifi usb's can be as problematic as pci cards, if not worse (least with linspire or freespire).

I've had excellent results with pup & a d-link dwl g122 ver B usb wifi dongle. It's worked A-1 on all I've tried (so far) with pup 2.12-3-4&5 live cd on 4 laps & 2 desktops (wep 64 hex) using the winx driver & ndiswrapper.

Ver B is important as there are 5 diff variants.. B is rt2500 based & the only one i've tried.
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Béèm
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Location: Brussels IBM Thinkpad R40, 256MB, 20GB, WiFi ipw2100. Frugal Lin'N'Win

#24 Post by Béèm »

jonyo wrote:Well, I'm very happy to say that I've managed to get this lap (gateway m520) up & running wifi with the onboard bcm card & 2.15CE. :D

Originally, I used 2.12 (& or 3..forget) & I think I got it to go wifi with ndiswrapper. Unless someone can correct me in that there were drivers that came with those earlier pup ver that would auto load a BCM wifi card.

Unfortunately, when I upgraded to 2.15 CE, not sure what happened but I lost everything. I thought I'd backed up my save file before starting the upgrade but I didn't double check & it must have been on another lap.

Spent quite awhile yesterday trying to get the wifi goin but 2.15CE is diff from the earlier vers mentioned in that bmc43xx loads auto on boot. I then found that I needed to add the firmware fix. In the end, ran into nothing but problems.

Started fresh today running 2.15CE in ram & to make a longer story short, I'm able to run 2.15CE with the onboard BCM card having unloaded the bmc43xx driver & loading the winx driver with ndiswrapper. :D Rock solid connection.

It could be that it may work with the bcm43xx driver, but I realized I didn't have the firmware fix handy so tried the other way & it worked. Also managed to get the wifi goin without using rutilt..for the first time.
Congratulations.
I am not sure, but I think the firmware fix is in 2.15. Or maybe it will be in 2.16.
So might be worth a try when 2.16 final is out.

Bernard
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jonyo

#25 Post by jonyo »

Thx,

Bit of an update. Seems that bmc43xx auto loads on boot with 2.15CE. Just to be clear I did do the firmware fix but the first day I tried to get it to work, ran into massive problems. With a fresh start on another day & in ram, the winx driver worked A-1 with ndiswrapper.

Since bmc43xx auto loads, decided to give it another go with the firmware fix as I was now running with the pup save file rather than through ram (that didn't have the firware fix).

Managed to get it to work with the native bcm43xx (even tried it by unloading the winx file) driver that auto loads on boot, but it was much more problematic & could only get a wifi connection with rutilt (rather than just the net wiz only with the winx file). Worse though is after ~ 10-15 minutes, the connection drops & when I reconnect through rutilt, the lap hangs big time & can only restart by turning off the power.

So, hopefully someone may have a suggestion as to how to fix (or stop) the native bmc43xx wifi driver auto loading on boot with 2.15 as I'm certainly good to go with the winx file & ndiswrapper.

Problem right now is that after trying a few times, the native bcm43xx driver auto loads on boot (which nullifies the winx ndiswrapper setup that works) & doesn't allow me to reload the winx file unless I unload the native bcm driver first. Bottom line is the auto load of the native bcm43xx driver on boot is continuing to be problematic for me.

Is there a way to stop bcm43xx from autoloading on boot with 2.15CE?
Last edited by jonyo on Thu 05 Jul 2007, 17:36, edited 4 times in total.
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Béèm
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#26 Post by Béèm »

You could try maybe to unload the bcm driver directly reboot in order to have a fresh pup_save file and maybe the isn't loaded then.
Never tried such a thing.
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macewan
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#27 Post by macewan »

Ok, instead of buying the USB I got a Netgear WG511v2 PCMCIA card. I have ZERO idea how to get Puppy to recognize it and try to load drivers for it. Help before I take the card back for store credit.
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Béèm
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#28 Post by Béèm »

macewan wrote:Ok, instead of buying the USB I got a Netgear WG511v2 PCMCIA card. I have ZERO idea how to get Puppy to recognize it and try to load drivers for it. Help before I take the card back for store credit.
I suppose WG..... stands for Web Gear.
Start with the network wizard, there is a pcmcia web gear driver and load it manually.

Second idea, do a search in the puppy forum on netgear and web gear.
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macewan
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#29 Post by macewan »

Béèm wrote:
macewan wrote:Ok, instead of buying the USB I got a Netgear WG511v2 PCMCIA card. I have ZERO idea how to get Puppy to recognize it and try to load drivers for it. Help before I take the card back for store credit.
I suppose WG..... stands for Web Gear.
Start with the network wizard, there is a pcmcia web gear driver and load it manually.

Second idea, do a search in the puppy forum on netgear and web gear.
I'll try both.

Thanks for your help.
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macewan
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#30 Post by macewan »

Option 1 didn't work, lots of info on number 2 though, researching..........
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jonyo

#31 Post by jonyo »

Dunno if the Netgear WG511v2 PCMCIA card is known to work well with pup but hope so. In my experience, the right wifi device can make all the diff between a straightforward hook up rather than going through hoops.

I'm assuming that 2.15 did not auto detect the card on boot. I'd try the auto detect (probe) all drivers & if that doesn't work, try the winx driver with the ndiswrapper, both in the net wiz.

Note that if auto probing all drivers in the net wiz, a wifi interface must show up for success. I've had scenarios where it loads on file after another with no success. So if trying that route, be sure to unload them, as you try them if they don't work.

Some folks have better luck connecting via rutilt but bottom line is a driver has to be loaded successfully first.
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Béèm
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#32 Post by Béèm »

macewan wrote:Option 1 didn't work, lots of info on number 2 though, researching..........
Search on netgear, third hit is on netgear 511
I didn't look further
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macewan
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#33 Post by macewan »

I saw the post mentioned after searching. I just need to find out where to copy the driver files. I put them in the C: drive but Puppy doesn't find them. I am gonna keep trying though. Puppy is just too cool of an OS to give up on.
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jonyo

#34 Post by jonyo »

I put the required .inf file on a usb stick.
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Béèm
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#35 Post by Béèm »

macewan wrote:I saw the post mentioned after searching. I just need to find out where to copy the driver files. I put them in the C: drive but Puppy doesn't find them. I am gonna keep trying though. Puppy is just too cool of an OS to give up on.
Just to avoid confusion: there is no such thing as a C: drive in Linux.
My first idea would be to put this kind of files in the directory where your pup_save is.
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jonyo

#36 Post by jonyo »

I think he means accessing the winx C drive while in pup, which can be done to load a driver. Course pup isn't gonna call it a C drive.

On this rig (2.14) an easy way to find the path is to click on the usb icon on the desktop called "drives". Then I click on the hard drive "rox" & up on the top left of the page that comes up is the path.

/inttrd/mnt/dev_save (i'm on top of freesire right now)

That's one way of going about it.
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