orinoco card with lombard powerbook

[D. Scott Moore]

Forget about using your card with Yellow dog.  Use Mandrake instead and do the 
following:

Steps 
 Here are the steps I took to get a wireless connection under Mandrake 9.1. 
MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE root!!! 
 1. insert the WPC11 card 
 2. execute /sbin/cardctl ident and observe the line containing manfid 0x..., 
0x... 
 3. create and/or edit the file /etc/pcmcia/hermes.conf 
 put these lines in hermes.conf 
 

device "orinoco_cs"
class "network"
module "hermes", "orinoco", "orinoco_cs"
# Linksys WPC11
card "Instant Wireless Network PC Card"
manfid 0x..., 0x... #the stuff from part 3
bind "orinoco_cs"

 4. restart the pcmcia services by executing /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia restart 
or whatever script restarts the pcmcia services on your distribution 
 5. execute /sbin/lsmod and make sure that the following appear in the output: 
 orinoco_cs 
 orinoco 
 hermes 
 6. The device eth1 should be the WPC11 card if you initially had another 
network card in your machine/laptop.  Set it up in the Mandrake Control 
Center!

For secure wireless:
 7. You must know your SSID or ESSID! If your network also uses encryption you 
must know the key(s). Note that iwconfig in the wireless-tools package 
currently does not support generating they key by passphrase so you must know 
the exact key. In my case I wrote the key down as it appears in hex on my 
router's configuration. There are a few options to setting up eth1 with the 
correct settings. One option involves modifying the /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts 
script, another option is to write the options into the 
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 script if you are running on a 
system with that script, or you can simply use the iwconfig utility. I will 
only describe the 2nd and 3rd option. 
 8a. Setup using the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 
 A sample file will look something like this: 
 
 DEVICE=eth1 
 BOOTPROTO=dhcp 
 DHCP_TIMEOUT=5 
 NETMASK=255.255.255.0 
 ONBOOT=yes 
 WIRELESS_ESSID=MYWLAN 
 WIRELESS_ENC_KEY=5A2G928D16C4C658EC071C6D09 
 HWADDR=00:02:2d:9f:32:5b 
 MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes 
 NEEDHOSTNAME=yes 
 
 You can probably omit the lines DHCP_TIMEOUT, MII_NOT_SUPPORTED, and 
NEEDHOSTNAME if you don't see a need for them. DHCP_TIMEOUT simply gives the 
number of seconds before the dhcp client stops trying to get an IP address 
via DHCP server. The WIRELESS_ESSID, and WIRELESS_ENC_KEY are made up so do 
not try to use them for your setup. HWADDR is the MAC address for your card 
which you can retrieve by executing ifconfig eth1. If you DO NOT use WEP 
encryption on your network then you can omit the line WIRELESS_ENC_KEY. The 
sample file contains a 128-bit encryption key. If you choose to use a 
40/64-bit key then it will be smaller than the sample one. REMEMBER that 
passphrases are not currently supported so you must know the exact key. After 
saving the configuration file execute ifup eth1 
 
 8b. Setup using the iwconfig utility 
 You may want to look through the iwconfig man pages that should have been 
installed if you properly installed the wireless-tools package. Type: man 
iwconfig and read through all the options. A minial setup would be: 
iwconfig eth1 essid MYWLAN key 5A2G928D16C4C658EC071C6D09
 (if you are using WEP encryption) or 
iwconfig eth1 essid MYWLAN
 (if you are not using WEP encryption). 
 
 Keep in mind that if you do not use the 2nd option then you will have to type 
the above iwconfig commands every time you start your machine. Now that you 
have typed the command in then execute dhcpcd eth1. If you do not have dhcpcd 
on your machine like mine running Mandrake 9.1 with zeroconf then you should 
execute dhcclient eth1. 
 Hopefully you'll get an IP address and you will be ready to go. If you are 
doing this at a University you might have to connect to your school's VPN 
server. You need a VPN client such as the Cisco VPN client. If your kernel 
was compiled using GCC 2 then make sure you get the Cisco VPN client for GCC 
2 or GCC 3 if your kernel was compiled with GCC 3. 
 If something happened where you couldn't get an IP address try to execute 
"service network restart" and see 
 if that helps. It actually helped me when I installed the same card on 
another laptop. 
 
 If you are having trouble try to troubleshoot by looking at the status lights 
on the card and using the iwconfig utility. There are two lights on the WPC11 
card version 3. One says Power, the other says Link. If you successfully 
manage to set the proper ESSID then you will see that the Link light now 
remains steady and does not blink. If your Link light keeps blinking then you 
know that the card has not been able to find the WAP. You can verify that by 
executing iwconfig and observing the Access Point line. If you see something 
like: 44:44:44:44:44..... then you have not found the access point.