struggle with PC Wireless card

I'd used a borrowed DLink wireless card on my Linux laptop before, so I
felt secure in purchasing one--not realizing that manufacturers change
internal electronics more often than they change their underwear.

It's a D-Link DWL-650M, and I downloaded the driver and compiled per
instructions on RH 9. The module seems to work, 'insmod -f rtl8180_24x'
results in a output from 'cat /proc/rtl8180/status' which indicates that
the module and card are somewhat functional.

If I send a parameter to the wlan0 interface, like SSID, with:
iwpriv wlan0 wlan_para ssid=Edgerock

where "Edgerock" is the SSID of my wireless infrastructure, that appears
in /proc/rtl8180/status. But if I try to set the channel number that my
WAP is on:
iwpriv wlan0 wlan_para channel=1
that doesn't show up in /proc/rtl8180/status; it stays at '0'.

So I'm not sure I'm making any progress at all. The PC card does not
"beacon" at all, as it seems to do when I boot up Win2k.

I haven't gotten to the stage of trying to make the PC card act as a PC
card... I've been booting with the card in-place. If I boot without the
card inplace, and then hotplug it, I get an entry in /proc/pci, but no
module insertion, etc. And if I eject the card, it hangs the system.

As you can tell, I'm groping in the dark.

--
Dave Brown Austin, TX

Dave Brown wrote:
> I'd used a borrowed DLink wireless card on my Linux laptop before, so I
> felt secure in purchasing one--not realizing that manufacturers change
> internal electronics more often than they change their underwear.
>
> It's a D-Link DWL-650M, and I downloaded the driver and compiled per
> instructions on RH 9. The module seems to work, 'insmod -f rtl8180_24x'
> results in a output from 'cat /proc/rtl8180/status' which indicates that
> the module and card are somewhat functional.
>
> If I send a parameter to the wlan0 interface, like SSID, with:
> iwpriv wlan0 wlan_para ssid=Edgerock
>
> where "Edgerock" is the SSID of my wireless infrastructure, that appears
> in /proc/rtl8180/status. But if I try to set the channel number that my
> WAP is on:
> iwpriv wlan0 wlan_para channel=1
> that doesn't show up in /proc/rtl8180/status; it stays at '0'.
>
> So I'm not sure I'm making any progress at all. The PC card does not
> "beacon" at all, as it seems to do when I boot up Win2k.
>
> I haven't gotten to the stage of trying to make the PC card act as a PC
> card... I've been booting with the card in-place. If I boot without the
> card inplace, and then hotplug it, I get an entry in /proc/pci, but no
> module insertion, etc. And if I eject the card, it hangs the system.
>
> As you can tell, I'm groping in the dark.
>

Do you find anything new on this page?

http://www.zdv.uni-mainz.de/1619.html

Nothing in /var/log/messages?

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, Gerard H. Pille wrote:
> Dave Brown wrote:
>> I'd used a borrowed DLink wireless card on my Linux laptop before, so I
>> felt secure in purchasing one--not realizing that manufacturers change
>> internal electronics more often than they change their underwear.
>>
>> It's a D-Link DWL-650M, and I downloaded the driver and compiled per
>> instructions on RH 9. The module seems to work, 'insmod -f rtl8180_24x'
>> results in a output from 'cat /proc/rtl8180/status' which indicates that
>> the module and card are somewhat functional.
>> ...
>
> Do you find anything new on this page?
>
> http://www.zdv.uni-mainz.de/1619.html
>

This link caused me to switch to my SuSE partition. Whereas I speak no
German, there's enough similarity to English that I was able to figure
out the essentials. (I translated better than Google did.)

Whereas I changed the EXTRAVERSION in the Makefile to "-4GB", and compiled
the module, it still does not load automatically (says there's a version
mismatch, 2.4.20-GB vs 2.4.20). So I have to load the module manually.
insmod -f rtl8180_24x
insmod -f priv_part
and then
iwpriv wlan0 enable
dhcpcd wlan0

At least now I can connect, so I don't feel I have to fight the merchant
to take the card back. I still have a lot to learn about wireless.


--
Dave Brown Austin, TX