Linksys WPC-11 with P/L 2.17

[bsawtelle]

I'm "moderately" knowledgeable with Linux. Have 2.17 running on a Dell laptop. Ran through the Network Wizard and when I do iwconfig, it reports what appears to be a "working" interface (it sees my wireless router, shows signal strength, freq, etc). I loaded ndiswrapper with the driver that I use on the Windows drive that works OK normally. Couldn't set IP from DHCP, but appeared to take when I set the static IP paramters, including DNS.

a couple notes:
- Interface shows as "eth0" not wlan0 (I assume this is not a problem, but thought I'd ask)
- At the beginning of the Wizard, it shows "ndiswrapper" and "orinoco" loaded as drivers (shouldn't it be just one???)
-when I do "dmesg" it lists eth0 as "connected" and no obvious (to me) error messages.
- Get "site not found" when I call up the browser. Can't ping local router at 192.168.15.1, although I got a confirmation message when I configured it as the gateway

All inputs cheerfully accepted!!

Thanks

[tempestuous]

The orinoco driver and ndiswrapper will conflict. Use one or the other, and preferably try the orinoco driver first, since it's a true Linux driver.
Also, during setup and testing, disable all encryption at your router. Once you know the driver works, then you can re-enable encryption.

[bsawtelle]

Thanks for the info. However, when I start up the Network Wizard, there doesn't appear to be a way to remove the ndiswrapper. I'm assuming there's a way to do it from the command line but I'm not familiar with that.

I had tried to run initially with the orinoco driver, but had similar results (seems to recognize card but no access to netwrok)

As another test, I tried Knoppix on a Live CD and had same results... no access to the network.

[bsawtelle]

Well, I disabled WEP on the router and lo and behold, it worked!!! Thanks for the pointer


Now, is there a way to "rationally" enable WEP again so I don't have everyone in my neighborhood using my ISP?

Thanks for the help!!

[tempestuous]

Enabling WEP is straightforward: turn it on at the router, then define your WEP key in the Network Wizard.

But getting WEP to work with the orinoco driver is a "black art". In the case of wifi adaptors with a true Orinoco chipset, the complication is due to the version of (non-volatile) firmware in the card. Details here -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 2709#92709

But it appears that your Linksys WPC11 does not contain an Orinoco chipset, it contains an early Prism chipset, either Prism1 or Prism2. These chipsets are also supported by the orinoco driver
... but not perfectly. WEP almost certainly won't work.
If you have a Prism2 chipset the ideal driver is hostap_cs.
If you have a Prism1 chipset then hostap_cs probably won't work, but prism2_cs should be OK.

It would be worth knowing your device ID. Run this

Code: Select all

cardctl ident

Or just try to use the best possible driver (hostap_cs) and see what happens.
First unload the orinoco driver

Code: Select all

rmmod orinoco_cs
rmmod orinoco

Now try to load the hostap_cs module

Code: Select all

modprobe hostap_cs

If no error message, check to see if an interface has been created

Code: Select all

ifconfig -a

[bsawtelle]

Checking through the list of available drivers on my Live puppy-linux CD, I've only found hosttap_cs.

The bigger issue is here's waht info I get on the chipset. It's a Linksys WPC11 card, but apparently some form of a "knock-off". In researching on the net and I think (read: assume...bad!!) that it's a Realtek 8180 chip set.

....any suggestions?

# cat cardctl.txt
Socket 0:
no product info available
Socket 1:
product info: "Instant Wireless ", " Network PC CARD", "Version 01.02", ""
manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002
function: 6 (network)

Thanks
Bruce

[bsawtelle]

I went back to the Linksys driver CD for the card and looking at the oemsetup.inf file, there are only references to Prism2, so I'm ASSUMING that's the chip set. I'll find a driver for it and give it a try.

Hopefully it supports WEP well.

[tempestuous]

Device ID 0156:0002 appears to contain an early Prism2 chipset.
This forum thread shows the messy situation about orinoco/hostap support of Prism2 chips -
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/125832
In theory the hostap driver should support your Prism2 chipset, but doesn't in practice.

So the only way to successfully use WEP would be to upgrade your onboard Prism2 firmware, as explained here -
http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/
... be warned that there is risk in this process.

Personally, I would open up the laptop and remove that old wifi device (it's just a miniPCI card) and replace it with a Ralink rt61-based wifi card.