2Wire Wireless USB Adapter

[cheater]

I'm attempting to run Puppy on an old Dell desktop. I have a 2Wire Wireless USB Adapter. Does anyone know how I can get this working? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[BlackAdder]

This post might help. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=21865
Don't know if the adapter is the same, though. There was also someone over on Linuxquestions trying to get a 2Wire USB adapter working with WPA.

[cheater]

I can't tell if it is the same adapter. I tried downloading the inf from the thread. I get this error in puppy when I try and load it with ndiswrapper:

2wirepcp : invalid driver!
wlanuig : invalid driver!
wltwoall : invalid driver!

[BlackAdder]

When using ndiswrapper you need not just the .inf file, but also any associated .sys files, and they must be in the same directory as the .inf file when installing to ndiswrapper. That may be the cause of your "invalid driver" messages.

[cheater]

Well, I've also tried downloading the .exe driver from the 2wire website. I then extracted it. The folder contained the inf and sys files. I get the exact same error as when I use the inf file from the thread posted.

[BlackAdder]

You have not said which 2Wire USB adapter you have, so I am guessing that it is the one pictured in this Ubuntu thread: http://www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2008/02 ... s-usb.html
According to that thread you just need the WlanUIG.inf and WlanUIG.sys files, although I looked in the .inf file and it could also expect a Windows .vxd file and that would put a spanner in the works.
One possibility is that the upper case part of the name has been mangled by Linux if you have copied the .sys file. It must have the same case structure as the .inf file is expecting, i.e. the name MUST be WlanUIG.sys.
The later part of the Ubuntu thread is not relevant to the Puppy environment, but it is encouraging that the 2Wire can be made to work with Linux.

[cheater]

I'm sorry, I completely forgot to specify what type of usb wireless adapter I have. It is the very bottom one on this page (http://www.2wire.com/?p=331).

The spelling was correct. Do you think the ubuntu thread would apply? This is a different model and a different OS.

Thanks a lot for all of your help.

[BlackAdder]

The adapter you have is quite different internally (the chipset) to that mentioned in the previous post. There is a Linux driver available, but that driver is not included in any Puppy release AFAIK.
You can find some information about the driver here:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Orinoco_USB
Looking at the Windows .inf file, there is doubt about whether ndiswrapper would work. In order to try, I think you would need the wltwoall.inf and the wltwo51.sys files in the same directory when creating the ndiswrapper control files. Don't forget to remove the result of any previous attempt(s) - e.g.
ndiswrapper -e wlwtwoall
Worth a try.

[cheater]

I have all the files that were inside the exe driver inside the same folder. I'm starting to lose hope of getting this adapter working. Would it maybe be easier to somehow connect the desktop to my laptop (through an ethernet cable?) and then use my laptop's wireless internet connection?

[BlackAdder]

It is not looking good for ndiswrapper. Before you give up you could check for error messages by using dmesg from an rxvt window. Possibly the firmware is not getting uploaded to the adapter, in which case it will probably be a no go.
Not sure that I could comment about your suggestion of connecting via a laptop, and others might need some more detail before giving advice.