[Techtalk] Re: Netgear MA401 and Red Hat 8.0 on an HP laptop

[Raven Alder]

Heya --

Quoth Akkana Peck (Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 12:10:43PM -0800):
> My Netgear MA401 works fine with the wvlan_cs driver (plug and
> play on Redhat), but web searching shows someone else using the
> same model number with the orinoco driver, and Michelle's card seems
> to be yet a third chip which doesn't work with either driver. :-(

	I've got the same card working (mostly*) with the orinoco_cs
driver.  To get it to work I had to grab and install the latest version
of pcmcia-cs from http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net, and run iwconfig
which then showed me the interface.  What kernel version are you
running?  That may make a difference.  2.4.20 here, and the drivers are
built with the kernel for me.

	I do get the beeps when I insert my card, though (or at least, I
did until they were too annoying and everything was mostly working --
you can disable them by setting CARDMGR_OPTS="-q" in your rc.pcmcia or
equivalent file that starts Card Manager at boot, CARDMGR_OPTS="-q -v"
if you also want verbose output).

	Then I had to add to /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts:

*,*,*,*)
	ESSID="RavenNetwork"
	KEY="B384-4C7A-72"

(you'll only need a key if your access point is doing WEP, and that's
 not my actual key) and this to /etc/pcmcia/network.opts:

*,*,*,*)
	BOOTP="n"
	DHCP="n"
	DHCP_HOSTNAME=""
	IPADDR="10.1.1.27"
	NETMASK="255.255.255.0"
	NETWORK="10.1.1.0"
	BROADCAST="10.1.1.255"
	GATEWAY="10.1.1.1"

	Hope that helps somewhat -- checking your kernel version against
the latest pcmcia-cs may shed some light on why it's not working.

*	"Mostly" meaning that when the network is completely saturated,
*	the card drops connectivity and removes itself from iwconfig.
*	Has to be manually removed and reinserted to be seen again --
*	unloading and reloading the software doesn't work.  I haven't
*	been able to find a lot about this online, but have heard from a
*	few friends that it's a known problem with kernels after 2.4.10.
*	Grrr.  Perhaps I'll try the wavelan_cs driver and see if it
*	still happens with that.

Cheers,
Raven
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