[Techtalk] wireless PC card *almost* working

[Katie Bechtold]

I think I've got my laptop's wireless PC card *almost* working.
First, here are the specs.  The laptop is an old Toshiba with Debian
installed on it.  The card is a Netgear MA401; the access point is a
Netgear WG602.

What I did to get the card somewhat working:

* Installed the Debian packages linux-wlan-ng, wireless-tools, and
pcmcia-cs.

* Plugged in the card.  Its LED is a steady green, which according
to the manual means the card has a connection with an access point
or another 802.11b device, but I'm not sure I believe that.

* Ensured that cardmgr was running on my computer.

* Ran 'cardctl ident', with the result:

Socket 0:
  product info: "NETGEAR MA401RA Wireless PC", "Card", "ISL37300P",
  "Eval-RevA"
  manfid: 0x000b, 0x7300
  function: 6 (network)
Socket 1:
  no product info available

* Ran 'modprobe orinoco_cs'.

* Edited /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.conf so that any entry for a Netgear
MA401 or MA401RA had a 'bind "orinoco_cs"' instead of a 'bind
"prism2_cs"'.

* Added the following lines to /etc/wlan/wlan.conf:

SSID_wlan0="myssid"
ENABLE_wlan0=y

* Created /etc/wlan/wlancfg-myssid with the configuration
appropriate for my access point.

* Restarted pcmcia services: /etc/init.d/pcmcia restart, which leads
to some output:

cs: memory probe 0x0d0000-0x0dffff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff: excluding 0x1f8-0x1ff 0x220-0x22f
0x378-0x37f 0x388-0x38f 0x400-0x4c7 0x4d0-0x4ef
cs: IO port probe 0x0200-0x021f: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0230-0x0377: clean.
.. and several more similar lines.

* Ran 'iwconfig':

lo	no wireless extensions

Warning: Driver for device eth0 has been compiled with an ancient
version of Wireless Extension, while this program is using version
16.  Some things may be broken...

eth0	IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"myssid"  Nickname: Prism  I"
	Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412GHz  Access Point:
	44:44:44:44:44:44
	Bit Rate: 11Mb/s  Tx-Power=15 dBm  Sensitivity:1/242700000
	RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
	Encryption key:off
	Power Management:off

Note that I don't have WEP enabled for this preliminary setup.  Baby
steps...

Now whenever I restart the computer or manually do a
/etc/init.d/pcmcia restart, it is connected to the access point (it 
appears in the station list on the access point's web interface, 
and I can reach my network and the Internet) but then the connection 
dies after about 30 seconds, for what reason I'd like to know.  When 
it dies, I get many error messages likes this: 

eth0: Tx error, status 4 (FID=030A)

Does anyone have any suggestions?

-- 
Katie Bechtold         http://katie-and-rob.org/