How to use Belkin F5d7010v8 wireless PCMCIA?

[fenex2004]

Hey all! I am playing with the old Pup 4 on a very old IBM thinkpad. I have the Belkin F5d7010ver8 wireless PCMCIA. I also have the CD that came with it. I've tried loading the ath_pci (need to know how to unload that by the way - didn't do it with the wizard and now it shows up all the time) The cd was no help - probably due to the above - as the files never loaded. I've looked all over searching page to page of every source I could find online and have reached my wits end. any help? It would be greatly appreciated!

[rjbrewer]

Hey all! I am playing with the old Pup 4 on a very old IBM thinkpad. I have the Belkin F5d7010ver8 wireless PCMCIA. I also have the CD that came with it. I've tried loading the ath_pci (need to know how to unload that by the way - didn't do it with the wizard and now it shows up all the time) The cd was no help - probably due to the above - as the files never loaded. I've looked all over searching page to page of every source I could find online and have reached my wits end. any help? It would be greatly appreciated!

Exactly which "Pup4"?

[fenex2004]

Exactly which "Pup4"?

Sorry about that, I'm using puppy 4.0.0 on this particular laptop. Thought about updating it but it just runs so darn good as it is Haven't tried the Belkin on the other system (Pup 4.3.1) so i'm not certain it would work on it.

[obxjerry]

I ran across this thread in my search for why the card I have works fine but the led on the card doesn't light when I'm running Puppy. I have a Thinkpad R51, the F5D7010v8 card and am running Puppy 431. It worked right out of the box, no tweaking. It looks to me like I'm running the ath5k module for the Atheros chip.

[rjbrewer]

4.3x uses ath5k with atheros cards.
This sometimes caused problems with wpa encryption.
Using an earlier kernel version uses ath_pci; which was always
stable with my ath devices.

[obxjerry]

I'm using wep. Some of my hardware won't wpa.

I still haven't found out why the LEDs don't light in Puppy and are as they should be in Windows. It bothers me because I can't understand how it works but the lights don't light. I thought one of them just shows the card is getting power. I guess I need to let that go.

[rjbrewer]

I'm using wep. Some of my hardware won't wpa.

I still haven't found out why the LEDs don't light in Puppy and are as they should be in Windows. It bothers me because I can't understand how it works but the lights don't light. I thought one of them just shows the card is getting power. I guess I need to let that go.

With my belkin-atheros-pcmcia card the light starts working
while loading kernel modules while booting; only with the new kernel
versions (like wary98).

It never came on when I used 4.xx series.

I never expect windows decorations with linux.

[obxjerry]

With my belkin-atheros-pcmcia card the light starts working
while loading kernel modules while booting; only with the new kernel
versions (like wary98).

It never came on when I used 4.xx series.

I never expect windows decorations with linux. Laughing

Thanks, rjbrewer. That's good to know but, that's not an easy decision for me. Puppy 431 is a good friend. I'd really like to see those lights, though.

[rjbrewer]

With my belkin-atheros-pcmcia card the light starts working
while loading kernel modules while booting; only with the new kernel
versions (like wary98).

It never came on when I used 4.xx series.

I never expect windows decorations with linux. Laughing

Thanks, rjbrewer. That's good to know but, that's not an easy decision for me. Puppy 431 is a good friend. I'd really like to see those lights, though.

I also use a belkin usb dongle, zd1211 chip; light comes on with any
version.

It's probably a combination of the kernel and the type of card being
used.

A friend gave me an old Cabletron pcmcia card, Orinoco chip.
It is 11mbs wireless b at best.
What wireless b lacks in signal speed, it more than makes up for
in superior distance ability.
I can pick up a solid signal from a block or more away; 2mbs per sec. atonly 4% signal strength.
Lights work with any version.

[obxjerry]

It's been six months since the OP has been here so I hope I'm OK posting here. It looks like I jinxed myself bragging about how well my Belkin card was working. Now it doesn't work half the time.

I bought this Thinkpad R51 maybe 3 weeks ago. XP worked fine when I looked at it but when I got it home it came up with a missing or corrupted WINDOWS\system32\config\system file and wouldn't boot. I found the best way to deal with that problem is to use Puppy to replace that file with the replacement file. In the back of my mind I am suspicious of the hard drive. XP is still kind of borked. I created a ext3 partition and installed Puppy. That didn't change XP and occasionally I would boot it and play with it. For the most part I was running Puppy and all was good. Xp has been giving me the error Windows Messenger with more frequency lately. I don't even know what Windows Messenger is.

A couple of days ago I wasn't getting a connection when I started Puppy. Puppy couldn't see my wireless network interface (wlan0). I'm thinking PCMCIA cards aren't hot swappable so I'm rebooting, taking the card out when no OS is running, reseating it, warming it up, vacuuming the holes where the pins connect, tapping it lightly. I'm thinking I have a short. Finally when it boots up it works. It hasn't quit while it's running but if it's been off for a while it doesn't want to work.

Running Puppy, the LEDs don't light so I tried booting XP. I'll admit I don't like XP and don't know how to use most of it. The card wasn't lighting the LEDs so I was doing the same things I was doing with Puppy. I finally stumbled into XP diagnostics and got a code 12, device can't find enough free resources. I disabled devices that weren't being used. Belkin diagnostics came up with a WMI error. I found that if I uninstalled the card in XP and rebooted XP and let the card reinstall half the time it would work again. I could reboot into Puppy and it would work.

While I was writing this Puppy lost connection. My wife is still connected by wireless so it's my laptop. Puppy showed this error:
Error!
Failed to raise interface wlan0
Failed command was: ifconfig wlan0 up
Error returned was:
ifconfig: SIOCSIFFLAGS: Input/output error
Puppy still saw the wireless network interface but wouldn't see networks. I rebooted to XP. It connected. I rebooted Puppy it stayed connected for less than a minute. It's getting more and more sketchy as time goes on.

I have no idea where my problem is. Does Windows set up the configuration for the devices on this computer even when I'm running Puppy? Is the hard drive loosing/corrupting data? Is it the wireless card? Is it the adaptor the card plugs into? Is it a hardware or software problem? Have I gone where no man has gone before?

[obxjerry]

I've tried swapping things around, wireless interfaces and laptops. It looks like nothing works anywhere. The Belkin card doesn't work in any laptop. My wife's laptop has a linksys usb dongle that is a pain to configure so I don't move it. The Zyxel PC card that's in the 600E Thinkpad doesn't work in the R51 Thinkpad and in my wife's laptop it shows that it is successfully installed but, it won't go to a website. I still can't wrap my head around what does what and where it's going wrong.

[obxjerry]

I did a surface scan, I got from the manufacturer, on the hard drive . It failed. Looks like I'll be running puppy sans hard drive on that computer for awhile. It's good to have options. Thank you Puppy.

[obxjerry]

It looks like I'm the only one here now. To future folks, I took my laptop apart and reseated the PC card slot. That problem seems solved.

Wireless on Puppy is kind of a crap shoot. Swapping things around didn't work for me as a quick component test. Out of the 3 laptops I have, only the last one (this one) worked wireless out of the box. It takes a good combination. The Zyxel card does work in the r51 but it took a little doing.

I'm running without a hard drive. Multi-session CD won't boot after I add a save. Remastered CDs won't boot on my laptop. My DVD burner on my desktop won't mount DVDs after they're burned and the laptop doesn't burn DVD. I'm booting from a DVD with a pup.save on a USB flash drive. I think it would boot a lot faster if I can get Puppy with my settings on a CD/DVD. I haven't given up but I'm drowning in coasters.