What driver do I use for my (Belkin) wireless card?

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simons101
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu 05 Jan 2006, 23:13

What driver do I use for my (Belkin) wireless card?

#1 Post by simons101 »

hello .. total N00b here.. :D so be nice...

running lastest pup 1.0.7 on an old ibm x20 thinkpad
and it works great ..
partitioned 1 gig on harddrive to save configuration...

now here's my prob...

Belkin wireless g notebook card fsd7010

please could some one give me a Forrest Gump type explaination
on how the hell u can get this to work and connect to my router..

seriously show me like i'm an idiot ..... because i'm going to cry :(

thx in advance .... btw great live cd...

Image

tempestuous
Posts: 5464
Joined: Fri 10 Jun 2005, 05:12
Location: Australia

#2 Post by tempestuous »

The applicable wireless driver in Linux is determined by the chipset contained within the adaptor. You might know that already, but I'm bewildered by the number of people who don't.

There are 2 significantly different versions of your card.
Run "lspci" and "lspci -n" in an xterminal to find the MANFID number of your card.

If you see 14e4:4318 or 14e4:4320 then your card is Broadcom-based, and you must use ndiswrapper.
See recent ndiswrapper discussion here -
http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic ... 8&start=15

If you see 1814:0201 then your card is Ralink-based. You could use ndiswrapper, but better to use the Ralink Linux driver from http://mymirrors.homelinux.org/puppy/wireless/
Last edited by tempestuous on Wed 29 Mar 2006, 13:06, edited 1 time in total.

kellog
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue 21 Mar 2006, 17:32

lspci?

#3 Post by kellog »

Doh! Man, I can't even get ls to work. I've got the same Belkin card, and also picked up a USB NIC last night because it was cheap - no joy. SUSE 10 works great with the wire though. I can't wait to be able to go Linux full time. I've got a way to go it seems. Any ideas why lspci or lspci -n come up as bad commands?

Thanks,

kellog

rkevans
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue 21 Mar 2006, 00:55
Location: Orlando, FL, USA

#4 Post by rkevans »

backup plan:

# dmesg | more

should show you the startup messages. The kernel probably saw and displayed the card at startup -- at least enough to determine the hardware info in XXXX:YYYY format, possibly far enough to show you a few text strings describing the card.

From that point, refer to tempestuous's post for which driver to load... I used the last link in his post to install and configure my wireless adapter and it was really easy. Of course, I started using Linux in 1994, so I'm probably a poor judge of easy. <Insert a long and very boring "back in my day, we..." speech here>

A poorly planned letter from my mis-spent youth -- http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2814 Hopefully, I don't still talk like that...

Rick Evans

The Major
Posts: 47
Joined: Thu 10 Nov 2005, 06:58
Location: UK
Contact:

how I sorted the problem

#5 Post by The Major »

I'm afraid there's nothing technical about my reply. I made the card work by copying the "Drivers" folder from the CD that came with the card to the home folder.

Then I ran the Wireless network wizard, having first downloaded wifi-beta (search on the forum for it). If you follow the ndiswrapper instructions to the letter, substituting the downloaded driver file (the .inf fle) and its location in the script.

Keep following the commands, check that the card is found (light comes on), and then run the ethernet wizard to connect to the internet.

I use an ol ThinkPad 600E and it works brilliantly

kellog
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue 21 Mar 2006, 17:32

#6 Post by kellog »

Well, I can't find anything with "XXXX:YYYY" format under dmesg - but thanks for replies. I'll just have to wait for now. Love SUSE 10 though. Time for book shopping again...

Best,

kellog

Mike6348
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri 24 Mar 2006, 05:43

#7 Post by Mike6348 »

I'm also a newbie with an Thinkpad 600 and a Belkin Wireless G card (F5D7010 Ver 5). I downloaded and followed the instructions on the Puppy wireless driver page. Then to make it even more complicated, I had to try and make WPA-PSK work. I downloaded the instructions and driver off the WPA-Supplicant page. Believe it or not, everything works. I'm typing on it now as proof. After reading all the problems people have had getting the wirelss stuff to work, I was pretty surprised how easy it was.

The only real difficulty is now trying to automate the loading process. I've got it down to having to open xterm and running the wpa_config script. I can live with that.

Make sure you check the version of the Belkin card you're using. I believe different versions of the Belkin card use different chipsets. I have version 5 and it needed the madwifi driver

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