Wireless PCMCIA

[alan]

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006, bruce wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com
> [mailto:fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com]On Behalf Of Jeff Vian
> Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 8:19 AM
> To: For users of Fedora Core releases
> Subject: Re: Wireless PCMCIA
>
>
> On Wed, 2006-07-12 at 08:02 +1000, contact51 wrote:
>> Such a dissapointment.
>>
>> Over the recent weeks I have really put in the hours getting to grips
>> with Linux by way of Fedora, having progressed from FC3-4 and now FC5.
>>
>> Being more than satisfied with results until now. Big problem.
>>
>> I went and bought a PCMCIA card for my laptop hoping to be able to use
>> it.
>>
>> My HDD is divided into two - Windows XP and Fedora 5.
>>
>> It took probably about 2 minutes to install the card, up and running
>> under XP.
>>
>> Some six hours later, after reading through numerous internet
>> descriptions on how one might install such a device, downloading and
>> installing gigabytes of files, wrappers etc. etc... still nothing!
>> Eventually giving up in despair I decided that some of my original
>> fears about Linux have to be correct. It is just a muddle of half
>> cooked amateur computer files cobbled together to resemmble an OS that
>> probably performs somewhere at about 60% compared to that of Bill
>> Gates' Windows.
> LOL.  What a whiner!
>
> If you have been watching this list, and doing any sort of research, you
> would have known that Linux can use certain brands of wireless cards
> natively (mainly those with the atheros chipset) and others have to be
> run by using ndiswrapper to enable use of the windows drivers for the
> card (broadcom, etc).

It may not be a wireless chipset issue.

If the device does not show up with an "lspci" command then it is a 
different issue.

It might be a cardbus card.  If you add "pci=assign-busses" to the kernel 
line in /etc/grub.conf and reboot, it usually fixes this problem.

Wireless support is problematic due to the binary firmware for the 
chipsets.  Since these do not have source, vendors are not willing to 
distribute them.

It is harder than it should be.  But it is not impossible.  All it takes 
is a bit of research and not buying the cheapest piece of crap at Fry's.

-- 
"I want to live just long enough to see them cut off Darl's head and
  stick it on a pike as a reminder to the next ten generations that some
  things come at too high a price. I would look up into his beady eyes and
  wave, like this... (*wave*!). Can your associates arrange that for me,
  Mr. McBride?"
                       - Vir "Flounder" Kotto, Sr. VP, IBM Empire.