getting a wireless PCMCIA Card to work

[Jim Pelton]

	I struggled a while with my Wallstreet 266 and a Linksys wpc11 v.3
card.  I tried many cards, because I initially wanted a 54MBps card, but
those chip-sets are not supported very well yet under YDL. 
	I recommend you use a card with the Orinoco PrismII chip-set because it
seems to be widely supported. You can check the net to find out what
chip-set your D-Link has in it. Be careful because cards are packaged
under the same model, but with different chip-sets! For example my
Linksys wpc11 v.3 has the PrismII chip-set, however v.4 of the wpc11 is
a RealTek chipset or something, and is not totally supported out of the
box by YDL.
	If you have a PrismII card, you should check this file:
/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia:
It should read:
PCMCIA=yes
PCIC=yenta_socket
PCIC_OPTS=do_scan=0
CORE_OPTS=
CARDMGR_OPTS=-f
	After a clean install, my /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia file had read pcmcia=no
and pcic=*blank*.
	This is the only change I had to make. After I made the change, I
restarted pcmcia services. cardmgr launched and recognized the card
(with two similar beeps). Then you can add the card via
redhat-config-network as an Orinoco/PrismII card.
	If you do not have a PrismII card, you may still be able to get your
chipset to work. There are drivers online which you may compile and
install, though support for others seems pretty weak by comparison to
PrismII. Or you can get the Linuxant DriverLoader, which allows you to
use Windows drivers for WLAN devices on Linux machines. It's about $40 i
believe. Hope this helps, Jim

On Mon, 2004-02-23 at 09:59, Nathan Kline wrote:
> hmm I edited my /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia file as specified in your 
> script and yet cardmgr is still not running even after a reboot.
> 
> I have a D-link dwl-650 card on a powerbook walstreet running YLD 
> 3.0.1. When I go into the network configuration panel I set up a new 
> network device and select the D-link 650 driver (the IRQ is set to 
> unknown, should this be different?) and the device is eth1. I then 
> activate it and I get this error:
> 
> "pcnet_cs device does not seem to be present, delaying eth1 
> initialization."
> 
> any light you or anyone else might be able to shed on this would be 
> greatly appreciated.  so far this is hte only snag I have run into with 
> this install.
> 
> -Mitb
> [o÷<]
> On Feb 23, 2004, at 7:27 AM, george_geller@earthlink.net wrote:
> 
> > First make sure that your /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia is working and 
> > launching cardmgr.
> >
> > Is cardmgr running?  To find out do a ps -aux | grep card
> >
> > Mine shows:
> > root       414  0.0  0.2  1604  708 ?        S    05:31   0:00 
> > /sbin/cardmgr -f
> >
> > If you don't have cardmgr running, pcmcia cards will not work.
> >
> > I had to change /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia according to this script:
> >
> > --- pcmcia.01	2004-02-06 05:42:28.000000000 -0800
> > +++ pcmcia	2004-01-17 08:14:00.000000000 -0800
> > @@ -96,27 +96,31 @@
> >  	if [ ! -f $SC ] ; then umask 022 ; touch $SC ; fi
> >  	if [ "$SCHEME" ] ; then umask 022 ; echo $SCHEME > $SC ; fi
> >  	grep -q pcmcia /proc/devices
> > -	if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
> > -	    if [ -d /lib/modules/preferred ] ; then
> > -		PC=/lib/modules/preferred/pcmcia
> > -	    else
> > -		PC=/lib/modules/`uname -r`/pcmcia
> > -	    fi
> > -	    KD=/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/pcmcia
> > -	    if [ -d $PC ] ; then
> > -		echo -n " modules"
> > -		/sbin/modprobe pcmcia_core $CORE_OPTS
> > -		/sbin/modprobe $PCIC $PCIC_OPTS
> > -		/sbin/modprobe ds
> > -	    elif [ -d $KD ] ; then
> > -		/sbin/modprobe pcmcia_core
> > -		/sbin/modprobe $PCIC
> > -		/sbin/modprobe ds
> > -	    else
> > -		echo $" module directory $PC not found."
> > -		break
> > -	    fi
> > -	fi
> > +# 	if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
> > +# 	    if [ -d /lib/modules/preferred ] ; then
> > +# 		PC=/lib/modules/preferred/pcmcia
> > +# 	    else
> > +# 		PC=/lib/modules/`uname -r`/pcmcia
> > +# 	    fi
> > +# 	    KD=/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/pcmcia
> > +# 	    if [ -d $PC ] ; then
> > +# 		echo -n " modules"
> > +# 		/sbin/modprobe pcmcia_core $CORE_OPTS
> > +# 		/sbin/modprobe $PCIC $PCIC_OPTS
> > +# 		/sbin/modprobe ds
> > +# 	    elif [ -d $KD ] ; then
> > +# 		/sbin/modprobe pcmcia_core
> > +# 		/sbin/modprobe $PCIC
> > +# 		/sbin/modprobe ds
> > +# 	    else
> > +# 		echo $" module directory $PC not found."
> > +# 		break
> > +# 	    fi
> > +# 	fi
> > + 		/sbin/modprobe pcmcia_core
> > + 		/sbin/modprobe $PCIC
> > + 		/sbin/modprobe ds
> > +
> >  	if [ -s /var/run/cardmgr.pid ] && \
> >  	    kill -0 `cat /var/run/cardmgr.pid` 2>/dev/null ; then
> >  	    echo $" cardmgr is already running."
> >
> > Hope this helps,
> >
> > George
> >
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