radio turned off or card broken?

ndiswrapper -l shows hardware present,driver present & the interface is up
with a static ip and i can ping the card's ip but i can't connect to the
router even after turning off the firewall - activity indicator on the
card is dark. iwlist wlan0 scan sees the WAP. Other PC's with different
cards connect OK.

Mandriva 2006, kernel 2.6.16.16, ndiswrapper 1.17, WMP54G version 1.2

johnny <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
> ndiswrapper -l shows hardware present,driver present & the interface is up
> with a static ip and i can ping the card's ip but i can't connect to the
> router even after turning off the firewall - activity indicator on the
> card is dark. iwlist wlan0 scan sees the WAP. Other PC's with different
> cards connect OK.

Does the machine have a wireless power-button at the top? I find that
under ndiswrapper my bcm wireless correctly toggles on/off when I push
the button but there is no real indication whether the button is in
the on or off state.

When wpa_supplicant has negotiated a key the blue led on the wifi
on/off button will flash with network activity. It doesn't flash
without propper keys being negotiated so it takes a bit of guesswork
to figure out what is going on.

-wolfgang
--
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/

On Sat, 10 Jun 2006 22:05:25 -0700, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:

>
> johnny <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>> ndiswrapper -l shows hardware present,driver present & the interface is up
>> with a static ip and i can ping the card's ip but i can't connect to the
>> router even after turning off the firewall - activity indicator on the
>> card is dark. iwlist wlan0 scan sees the WAP. Other PC's with different
>> cards connect OK.
>
> Does the machine have a wireless power-button at the top? I find that
> under ndiswrapper my bcm wireless correctly toggles on/off when I push
> the button but there is no real indication whether the button is in
> the on or off state.
>
> When wpa_supplicant has negotiated a key the blue led on the wifi
> on/off button will flash with network activity. It doesn't flash
> without propper keys being negotiated so it takes a bit of guesswork
> to figure out what is going on.
>
> -wolfgang

There's no designated radio on/off switch on my desktop like there is on
my laptop. The card was working but it wouldn't work with the new
kernel (2.6.16.16) - the card wouldn't work after rebooting to the kernel
that it was working with (2.6.15.6). I've tried uninstalling and
reinstalling ndiswrapper, the Windows driver, and wpa_supplicant. I guess
it's time to buy a new card - these wireless cards don't seem to hold up
very well.

johnny <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
> There's no designated radio on/off switch on my desktop like there is on
> my laptop. The card was working but it wouldn't work with the new
> kernel (2.6.16.16) - the card wouldn't work after rebooting to the kernel
> that it was working with (2.6.15.6). I've tried uninstalling and
> reinstalling ndiswrapper, the Windows driver, and wpa_supplicant. I guess
> it's time to buy a new card - these wireless cards don't seem to hold up
> very well.

I would be surprised if updating the kernel damaged the card. It is
probably something else.

Might the ndiswrapper module not have been updated? It really needs
to track the exact kernel version number.

This is what I have on an Fedora FC5 system with a Broadcom-4319 based
card. It works as well as anything that uses microsoft components.
(No ipv6, no multicast, but vanilla ipv4 work fine.)

kmod-ndiswrapper.x86_64 1.13-3.2.6.16_1.2122_F
kmod-ndiswrapper.x86_64 1.13-3.2.6.16_1.2111_F
ndiswrapper.x86_64 1.13-2.lvn5

If you can't make ndiswrapper work and really want/need a more
supported card you might want to try anything based on the Atheros
chipset. It has native drivers and as far as I can tell everything
just works fine.

-wolfgang
--
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:35:29 GMT, johnny <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
<(E-Mail Removed)>:

>There's no designated radio on/off switch on my desktop like there is on
>my laptop. The card was working but it wouldn't work with the new
>kernel (2.6.16.16) - the card wouldn't work after rebooting to the kernel
>that it was working with (2.6.15.6). I've tried uninstalling and
>reinstalling ndiswrapper, the Windows driver, and wpa_supplicant. I guess
>it's time to buy a new card - these wireless cards don't seem to hold up
>very well.

I've only seen one Wi-Fi PC Card fail in all of my experience.

--
Best regards, FAQ for Wireless Internet: <http://Wireless.wikia.com>
John Navas FAQ for Wi-Fi: <http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi>
Wi-Fi How To: <http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi_How_To>
Fixes to Wi-Fi Problems: <http://wireless.wikia.com/wiki/Wi-Fi_Fixes>

On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 18:13:47 -0700, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:

>
> johnny <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>> There's no designated radio on/off switch on my desktop like there is on
>> my laptop. The card was working but it wouldn't work with the new
>> kernel (2.6.16.16) - the card wouldn't work after rebooting to the kernel
>> that it was working with (2.6.15.6). I've tried uninstalling and
>> reinstalling ndiswrapper, the Windows driver, and wpa_supplicant. I guess
>> it's time to buy a new card - these wireless cards don't seem to hold up
>> very well.
>
> I would be surprised if updating the kernel damaged the card. It is
> probably something else.
>
> Might the ndiswrapper module not have been updated? It really needs
> to track the exact kernel version number.
>
> This is what I have on an Fedora FC5 system with a Broadcom-4319 based
> card. It works as well as anything that uses microsoft components.
> (No ipv6, no multicast, but vanilla ipv4 work fine.)
>
> kmod-ndiswrapper.x86_64 1.13-3.2.6.16_1.2122_F
> kmod-ndiswrapper.x86_64 1.13-3.2.6.16_1.2111_F
> ndiswrapper.x86_64 1.13-2.lvn5
>
> If you can't make ndiswrapper work and really want/need a more
> supported card you might want to try anything based on the Atheros
> chipset. It has native drivers and as far as I can tell everything
> just works fine.
>
> -wolfgang

I install ndiswrapper from the latest stable tarball (version 1.17). I
suppose I could try the beta or cvs versions of ndiswrapper. I don't want
to use the Atheros based cards because they are non-standard
implementations of 802.11g. When the 11n standard is implemented, then
I'll upgrade from 56 Mb cards.