Mandrake 10 + 802.11g PCI card

dahamsta

First of all, will somebody with a copy of Mandrake 10 and a leased line burn it for me please?

Secondly, can someone recommend an 802.11g PCI card that'll work with Mandrake out of the box?

Ta,
Adam

tomk

I'm a Debian head myself, Adam, but as long as you're using kernel 2.6.5 or 2.6.6, you'll have support for the PrismGT 802.11g chipset, and according to the Prism54 project, the SMC2802W PCI card has a success rate of 87%.

I'm using a 3Com PrismGT PC card in my laptop (success rate 91%), with a 2.4.26 kernel and the Prism54 kernel patch. I was prepared for some difficulty getting it up and running, but it was dead easy.

Ste-

I have Mandrake 10, I can copy my cds for you if you want.

maxheadroom

Originally posted by Ste-
I have Mandrake 10, I can copy my cds for you if you want.

I've Mandrake 10 Official downloaded and can burn if you'd like, but I am in Dublin, you might be able to find someone closer?

Be careful with the Prism cards - some of them have a different / newer interface chip (I don't really understand much about this, so this is a very basic and probably wrong interpretation of the facts), which the drivers don't support.

But, there's always driverloader (which I'm forced to use, my prism card isn't supported by prism54 and ndiswrapper won't work with it).

Ste-

I'm based in Dublin too but I can post the cd's for free.
So if you can't find anyone closer I'll gladly avail of my free postal abilities.

flamegrill

Adam

Get yourself a decent cisco card

Try ebay.

Paul

dahamsta

I'm picking the CDs up off someone in Cork tomorrow, but I appreciate the offers. I'd be interested in more feedback on the wireless cards though. I'm a total plug and play guy, hate pissing about with stuff, and that's especially true now when I'm up the walls with reorganising everything else in my wee little network.

adam

hostyle

I've mentioned it before but: I've a Belkin 802.11g (no model specified) with a Broadcom (BCM4306 / BCM2050) chip - I got it in PC world when they had a sale on. Works flawlessly, and setup is simple - via ndiswrapper (download the latest stable version, not the outdated one that comes with Mandrake) and the windows drivers - but not plug and play. This was after having all sort of hard hangs, AP crashes and other nightmares with D-Link and Netgear PCI cards. Running on Mandrake 10.0 CE.

<edit>
Cisco = Linksys (I think)? Guy upstairs has the Linksys WMP54G running on Mandrake 10 via ndiswrapper driver. Its Broadcom based too.
</edit>

maxheadroom

Originally posted by hostyle
Cisco = Linksys (I think)? Guy upstairs has the Linksys WMP54G running on Mandrake 10 via ndiswrapper driver. Its Broadcom based too.

Well, Linksys = Cisco, in that Cisco bought Linksys. The product lines are still very different though.

The Cisco Aironet 350 has linux drivers, but it's 802.11b. I did'n see linux drivers listed for the Cisco Aironet 802.11a/b/g part...

tomk

Originally posted by maxheadroom
Be careful with the Prism cards - some of them have a different / newer interface chip (I don't really understand much about this...)

To clarify this a little, some manufacturers have changed chipsets without changing the model number, so a card that you think is Prism-based turns out to be using the Atheros or ACX-100 or some other chipset. The SMC card mentioned above is not one of these.

... my prism card isn't supported by prism54

That's because it is not a prism card (see above).

Originally posted by dahamsta
I'm a total plug and play guy

We're not quite at the stage where 11g Wi-Fi is plug-and-playable under Linux, but it's not that hard to set up either, as long as you do the research before purchasing.

maxheadroom

Originally posted by tomk
To clarify this a little, some manufacturers have changed chipsets without changing the model number, so a card that you think is Prism-based turns out to be using the Atheros or ACX-100 or some other chipset. The SMC card mentioned above is not one of these.

While this is true, this is not what I was talking about.

Originally posted by tomk
That's because it is not a prism card (see above).

yes, it is.

#lspci
0000:00:09.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation Intersil ISL3890 [Prism GT/Prism Duette] (rev 01)

But I get the same error that's listed
here (my card is a cheap creatix one that come with a fujitsu siemens PC though)

EDIT: And, the smc2802w v2 is waht is most commonly reported as causing these problems...

tomk

My apologies, max - I stand corrected.

Re the SMC card, in this case, SMC has been kind enough to label the newer version "v2" - my recommendation is for the original card only.

dahamsta

I had the same thing with my Netgear card, the original had a prism chipset, but "v2" has a TI chipset and I can't get it to work with the Linuxant DriverLoader. I'll see how I go with Mandrake 10 before I buy a new one obviously.

adam

slartibardfast

for the v2 cards maybe give ndiswrapper a go, it's free and very similar conceptually to the Linuxant driverloader.
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/


they also list a native driver for ti chips 'acx-100', but I know nothing of it:
http://acx100.sourceforge.net/