[FC2] Best option for PCMCIA Wireless card

[Chris Kloiber]

On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 11:23, Thomas Molina wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Gustavo Matheus Rahal wrote:
> > I did a search in the list and a lot of googling and didn't come to a
> > conclusion about a good option of a PCMCIA Wireless card running on FC2.
> > There was a discussion about a Orinoco card but with different opinions.
> > I would like that people that had success setting a wireless card could
> > give information about the card (the specific model) and how they did to
> > get it to work. I think it would help a lot of people in the list.
> 
> Sorry I am so late in replying to this message.  I had to make time to 
> install FC2 on my laptop to test my favorite wireless card.  I finally got 
> to it this evening and had mixed success.  Later, when I have time I will 
> submit an item to bugzilla with all the gory details.  For now I will pass 
> on the results of my testing.
> 
> My laptop is a Compaq Presario 12XL325 with a 650MHz PIII cpu.  My 
> favorite wireless ethernet card is an SMC2632W.  It uses the orinoco, 
> orinoco_cs, and hermes modules, in addition to the usual pcmcia modules.  
> Getting it working, however, was not straightforward.  When pcmcia 
> services are started during bootup I get a message in /var/log/messages 
> saying no sockets found.  All the right modules are loaded, but nothing 
> works.  
> 
> What I had to do to get things working is wait until the system is fully 
> up.  When I can log in as root I can get things working.  I first have to 
> unload all the modules by hand.  Using the "service pcmcia stop" command 
> does not unload any of the modules.  Once I have issued the stop command 
> and unloaded all the modules I then issue the "service pcmcia start" 
> command.  It then finds the socket and inserting/removing the card works 
> as expected.
> 
> The no socket found message seems independent of whether the card is 
> inserted or not during boot.  I was not able to configure the card during 
> install because (big assumption here) of the observed no socket found 
> noted above.  In order to configure the card and the resulting eth0 I had 
> to resort to the manual removal of the modules, followed by restarting 
> pcmcia and inserting the card.  I could then use the GUI to add a new 
> wireless device as normal.
> 
> I apologize if the above is not as coherent as I would like.  I am going 
> to bed now.  As I said, I will enter a bugzilla item when I can.  I guess 
> I should have tested the laptop before now.  I hope this helps someone.

Granted I have an x86_64 laptop, but try some or all of the kernel boot
options: noapic pci=noacpi,usepirqmask or noacpi and see if that allows
you to boot with the wireless nic. On an 'open' wireless lan (no
security) my pcmcia orinco_cs will find the network with no
configuration at all using these options. Using wireless security
obviously does require running system-config-network.

-- 
Chris Kloiber