WiFi on laptop

[kkut001]

I have an Acer 5050-5954, which has an Atheros card for wireless. The Puppy Network interface lists an Atheros module, but only for pci whereas I believe all laptop cards are pcmcia. Nevertheless, I tried the listed pci Atheros module, but Puppy did not set up a 'eth1' interface for it, and indicated I should unload it. I searched for an Atheros Linux pcmcia driver, but did not find one. (Please let me know if there is one and I just missed it.)

I then tried ndiswrapper. First, I went to Vista's Hardware Manager and found the driver it is using -- a .sys file was shown. I rebooted into Puppy after copying the .sys file to my thumb drive. Puppy complained that it needs to be an .inf file for ndiswrapper.

So I went to Acer's site and downloaded the newest applicable Atheros driver, unzipped it, copied the .inf file to my thumb drive, rebooted into Puppy, and used the Network interface to choose 'ndiswrapper', and pointed it to the .inf file. Again, though, Puppy indicated no interface (like 'eth1') could be created.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Or, what I haven't tried yet? I'm stuck...

TIA, kkut

[laptopnewbee]

I have an Acer 5050-5954, which has an Atheros card for wireless.

good wireless chipset in my opinion.

here is how i got my wifi card with that chipset working;
first i used the win98se driver software.
second because it didn't work i played with things i didn't know anything about.
there was a .cat file in the driver bundle, and i opened a console in the directory with the driver, in this console i put in the next command

Code: Select all

source <filename.cat>

i then was able to run ndiswrapper using the .inf file as it now was in the directory.

after all was done i was able to use the network wizard version 2.14-8 to configure it for use with wpa-psk security.

hope this helps.

[gary101]

I got an Atheros pcmcia card today and just loaded the rt2500 module in the network wizard, it connected straight away with no problems. (under puppy 2.16)

[laptopnewbee]

I got an Atheros pcmcia card today and just loaded the rt2500 module in the network wizard, it connected straight away with no problems. (under puppy 2.16)

interesting.
the rt2500 mod is the driver for a ralink chipset, not atheros. funny that it works.

[kkut001]

Thanks for the replies. Sounds like two suggestions here: 1) find a .cat file, 'source' it, run ndiswrapper using the .inf file thus created, then use the network wizard to config it, or 2) try to use the rt2500 module in the network wizard (for puppy 2.16, in any case).

I'll try suggestion #2 first, since it seems easiest/cleanest (though unexpected if it should work; I'd never have thought of trying the rt2500 module). Certainly, having two suggestions is better than being completely stumped, so (again) I appreciate your taking some time out to pass them along.

[tempestuous]

I got an Atheros pcmcia card today and just loaded the rt2500 module in the network wizard, it connected straight away with no problems.

If the rt2500 module loads, then your wifi device has a Ralink RT2500 chipset, not Atheros.
If the chip was truly Atheros, the rt2500 module would not load ... or it might load, but it definitely would not create a network interface.

The Puppy Network interface lists an Atheros module, but only for pci whereas I believe all laptop cards are pcmcia.

The "ath_pci" module supports Atheros-based wifi devices, both PCI and Cardbus. This is not unusual, since the Cardbus interface is an extra layer on top of the PCI interface.
Cardbus is the modern 32bit version of the old 16bit PCMCIA interface. It's commonly still referred to as "PCMCIA" since the cards are physically identical. The only visual difference is that Cardbus cards have a copper strip at their front edge.

I tried the listed pci Atheros module, but Puppy did not set up a 'eth1' interface for it

The ath_pci module should create an interface called "ath0" not "eth..".

With ndiswrapper you must always load the Windows "inf" file. This is just an information file, which will reference the other driver files such as "sys" and "cab", so obviously all of those Windows files must be available in the same location.