A short FAQ about a lot of recent devices that have been a nuisance.

Wireless Kit:

The Dlink DWL-520+ DWL-650+ and a number of other wireless devices advertised as a boosted 802.11b 22Ghz standard. This is just the "+" version of these model numbers, the DWL-650, 650H, and 650A are all 3 entirely different chipsets (all supported)

<strike> DONT WORK</strike> (I wish overstrike showed up!) Anyway, see bottom post!

And won't until TI releases enough specs for someone to be able to write a driver. A company called eusso.com got a nasty handslapping for releasing a driver that only worked with the 2.4.18 Mandrake 8.1 kernel. Mail me if you're that desperate. I've only got my hands on the pcmcia driver though, not the PCI card driver.

The WMP11/WPC11 v2.7 Is NOT A PRISM2 card, although Linksys in their infinite wisdom still ship it with a CD that has a directory labelled "linux" that points you to the www.linux-wlan.net driver.

Most other devices are either symbol, atmel, prism2, or orinoco chipsets and are covered by a number of linux drivers.

orinoco, prism2 and some symbol (check hermes.conf against the command "/sbin/cardctl ident" for your card, also covers all of the PCI prism2 cards, like the WMP11=<2.5, the DWL-520 etc.:

http://ozlabs.org/people/dgibson/dldwd/

prism2:

ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/
www.linux-wlan.net

Another awesome prism2 driver. Also, this does host_ap mode so you came make a regular wireless client into a host mode router (which you can do with anything else actually in ad-hoc mode). Also, these modules compile with a simple "make, make install" brilliantly:

http://hostap.epitest.fi/

The USB atmel series of toys:

http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/news.html

For 802.11g, I haven't read about any working Linux drivers, correct me if I'm wrong please.

(UPDATE!!! 7-28-03) I might be wrong, see bottom post....

For 802.11a, I've only read about the Atheros driver, which doesn't support A+B combo cards:

http://team.vantronix.net/ar5k/

Most of these I first learned about on Jean Tourrilhes excellent wireless page:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_...s.drivers.html

There are many threads here that cover any wireless device currently supported if you are having trouble. Before posting, please use the search option.

I'll be updating this thread periodically, if you have any questions about anything listed here, or would like a particularly squirelly device to have its own entry, feel free to mail me about it.

Also, if you would like to recieve updates about any of the devices here, as I intend to make changes if something gets sorted out, hit the subscribe button.

Cheers,

Finegan

Video Cards

Unless you've been buried under a rock for a few years you should know that Nvidia produces their own video drivers, and does it really well.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=li..._ia32_1.0-4191

Slightly less well known is that ATI recently started producing binary drivers as well, at least for their uber-expensive cards...

http://mirror.ati.com/support/faq/linux.html

And just because I have one, and its the coolest thing since glowing cheese, Matrox:

http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/dr...atest/home.cfm

Also, there have been recent movements on the Intel GL845 and GL830 front that have got these things working reasonably under X-Windows. Try:

http://backwatcher.org/mirrors/XFree...10.4.html#toc3

See if your chipset is listed, and then download a binary install of XFree86 4.3.0 (its easier to install then you think):

www.xfree86.org

Cheers,

Finegan

To trouble shoot the latest nvidia driver download and run the nv_check script, make any changes that it recomends.

Apparently D-Link changed the chipset in the DWL-520 without telling anyone. Unlike when Linksys did this with the WMP11, D-Link seems to have made a swap out for a much better chipset! its an ADMtek that the company actually wrote drivers for, although I haven't been able to locate exactly where to find them off of the ADMtek website, but thanks to a kind LQ member: bruce1271 I've got a copy of the source. Here's a mirror that'll be temporary:

http://www.clockwatching.net/~fin/ra...211_src.tar.gz

If that link is broken, mail me and I'll fix it... when I track this down elsewhere I'll just have it redirect. Its RH-centric, so you'll have to have the kernel source installed AND edit the Makefile to point to /usr/src/(your kernel tree), by default its pointed at /usr/src/linux-2.4/

So, if you've got the following /sbin/lspci, you've got a cool new card:
00:0e.0 Network controller: Linksys: Unknown device 8201 (rev 11)
Subsystem: D-Link System Inc: Unknown device 3503
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr-
Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort-
<MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 32 (16000ns min, 32000ns max), cache line size 08
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: I/O ports at d800 [size=256]
Region 1: Memory at e5822000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=100mA
PME(D0+,D1+,D2+,D3hot+,D3cold+)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=2 PME-

Cheers,

Finegan

Thank goodness, finally!!!

The not-so-new HPT372 and HPT374 and the newer PDC chipset cards are all finally backported to the kernel, check out 2.4.21-rc2 and back through to about -pre3 I think.

Cheers,

Finegan

It seems there is another unsupported wireless card out there, the:

Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 MiniPCI

Unlike Texas Instruments and Broadcom which are being downright ornery, Intel's new chipset is just too new to have a driver produced from the open community on their specs, I'll amend this if/when that changes. As always, with all things wireless keep a look out on Jean's page:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_...s.drivers.html


Also, as the Summer has ramped up, combo cards galore have hit the shelves. As far as I know, NONE of these combo cards have a working Linux driver, and quite a few of them are broadcom chipsets.

As far as supported kit goes, I have found that this list is actually very much up to date:

http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_...ted_html2.html

and the boys over at linux-wlan have been figuring out what new chip is in any new given wireless product from the big networking jokers within a few weeks of its release.

Alot of devices that have hit the street recently have been RealTek RTL8180L and ADMtek 8211 chipsets, both of these work with 1/2 GPL, 1/2 binary library drivers.

Cheers,

Finegan

Oh my goodness... it seems that the acx100 reverse engineering nutballs have actually got a working driver release. If you still have a TI acx100 chipset based card lying about: the DWL-650+ for instance, take a look at this:

http://acx100.sourceforge.net

Also linked off of the same URL is the pirated binary only driver that some poor taiwanese manufacturer got slapped for compiling for us poor geeks. It only works with slim kernel/distro selection and is somewhat of questionable legal origin. (that's what we like to call a disclaimer).

Cheers,

Finegan

Cruising Jean's page led me to the pcmcia wireless forum at sourceforge.net which led me to this one:

http://ruslug.rutgers.edu/~mcgrof/80...Documentation/

Evidently this is an 802.11g driver for one of the more common chipsets, the prismGT, marketed a lot by Linksys. If you have one of these cards, check out these drivers and get back to me on how they work, I'm curious.

(edit: 2-1-04) I've actually helped a lot of people with this one. Its in the 2.6.x series kernel now. Too bad Intersil got out of the 802.11 game as these are probably the most rock steady drivers for g/a out there.

www.prism54.org

Also, the Atheros chipset 802.11a driver seems to have wandered out of Beta and into a multi-chipset version too, so woohoo, combo cards working!?!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi


Cheers,

Finegan

More Miscellaneous wireless goop:

With Broadcom's hammering of the market with pre-spec 802.11g kit, and their total disregard for Linux users, the only 802.11g supported cards these days were the Prism Duet series and the Atheros 5k series cards. Centrino is still unsupported, although its on Intel's Roadmap... yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.

Well, there are a pair of new answers for your wireless woes:

The www.linuxant.com drivers:

http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/

Driverloader provides a wrapper layer between a Linux kernel driver and no kidding... the WINDOWS driver for the card. Albeit a cute solution, it bugs me for two core and obvious reasons:

1. Its using the bloody Windows driver for goodness sakes!!!
2. The Linuxant driver is entirely proprietary, is beta, and may in the future cost money...

As much as I realize these guys have to make some cash to keep their development afloat, I fundamentally cannot see myself paying AGAIN to get a piece of hardware working.

There is another project out there which is only half of the evil, ndiswrapper, it tries to do the same thing that the Linuxant driver is doing, except that its GPL.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/

I wish I had happier information to add, but the wireless world right now seems to be a bit of a mess.

Cheers,

Finegan

According to Scott_R, the ndisdriver over at SF:

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net

Has made quite a few strides as of late in getting the messy cards to work, Broadcoms, Centrinos, Realtek 8180s, etc...

Unlike the www.linuxant.com drivers, the ndiswrapper is GPL, a little muckier to get working of course, but hastle free on renewable licensing and the like.

If you're trapped with one of these non-natively support cards in mini-PCI flavor or such, remember, you can always call and bitch at your laptop manufacturer and maybe get a part-swap. Make certain to do your research ahead of time as to what they offer that might be linux supported. For instance, Dell has Truemobiles that are Prism2/2.5/3, orinocos or Atheros cards (for other then straight 802.11b), that have Linux drivers out there, but the support rep is only going to know 1180, 1200, 1400, etc...

I talked at LWE with the Gentoo wireless guy, and he had just gotten back from a hounding session over at the Intel booth, so take this for what it is; geek gossip:

There seems to be an existing Intel Centrino native Linux driver. Intel will ship it to big clients, precompiled, and because they're afraid of giving away IP, they don't want to open source it. Yeah, that's stupid, but it doesn't look like there will be a native linux centrino wireless driver for quite some time...

Thanks go to Scott_R for the heads up, and remember, I only own 12 machines, and nothing actually that runs DDR ram so if you know of something common, say an entire swath of hardware with oddities, like SATA stuff, ACPI tweaks, new adaptec SCSI voodoo, etc... please email me, or Aussie for that matter too now that he's back from the "holiday" that we all envy him for.

Cheers,

Finegan

News Flash!


Intel have released an open source driver with firmware for the Pro/Wireless 2100 MiniPCI, aka, Centrino.

You can get the goodies here,
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/

From the above linked page,

This project was created by Intel to enable support for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 (IPW2100) mini PCI adapter. This project is intended to be a community effort as much as is possible given some working constraints (mainly, no HW documentation is available) If you have a laptop with an Intel PRO/Wireless and want to give it a spin, please do so and send feedback, bug reports, feature requests and any fixes you come up with. Please let us know which distrubition you use this with, and any problems you encounter.. Keep in mind that the driver is under active development and is in an experimental phase right now. This means not all of the features and functionality provided in other operating systems have been implemented yet. We are building a todo list and have put up a development mailing list to help in development. In order to use the IPW2100 driver you will need the following: Linux (of course) with a 2.4.23+ or 2.6.1+ kernel [link] Wireless Extensions and Tools [link] The IPW2100 driver. You can obtain kernel patches below. The IPW2100 binary firmware image. The firmware can be obtained here. For instructions on how to build and use the driver, please see the INSTALL file available in each snapshot tarball.

Okay, this one is going un'sticky as the "recent" is kind of a misnomer as we last added info over a year ago. It was alright while it was going, but to much stuff "just works" lately to justify it.

Cheers,

Finegan