TRENDware 802.11g 54MBPS PCI card driver?

Message

pakt · #46 Post by **pakt** » Mon 16 Jan 2006, 11:35

You may find a clue here:

edoc wrote: * Other: The drivers on the CD provided with the card contains the mrv8000c drivers, but these drivers doesn't work fine for me. You can download the "Libertas CB-35P/MB-35P driver" on Marvell's site (link above). They work well with ndiswrapper 1.4 on a 2.6.13-gentoo-r3 kernel. You can also check this document (in French): http://perso.wanadoo.fr/kdntl/articles/ ... id-10.html [/color]

I just got my rt2500-based wireless card to work in Puppy 1.0.7, but ndiswrapper only worked with one of the three XP drivers that I tried.

After running "modprobe ndiswrapper", check dmesg to see if error messages show up.

Paul

edoc · #47 Post by **edoc** » Mon 16 Jan 2006, 16:56

pakt wrote:You may find a clue here:
edoc wrote: * Other: The drivers on the CD provided with the card contains the

Just to clarify that was me quoting someone else, without the babelfish online translation app I'd not have a clue what any French language page would say!

I have tried at least four different XP drivers so far and none of them work completely. The one from the Trendware CD only works partially.

I am wondering if the hardware problem may be related to the Linux version. Perhaps the newer ndiswrapper has made assumptions about the Linux release (2.6.xxx vs 2.4.xxx)?

doc

puppypilgrim · #48 Post by **puppypilgrim** » Mon 16 Jan 2006, 18:49

edoc,

I just read the latest post at work and went to this page:

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/medi ... p/ListItoP

Where it shows that our PCIID 11ab:1faa Trendware card actually works with ndiswrapper but with the Marvell 8335 driver instead of the 8000c. So I followed the link to here

http://www.marvell.com/drivers/driverDi ... =122&pId=3

and downloaded the 8335 driver and will try it with my machine at home tonight. I'm currently at work so I can't do it from here. Hey, at least I can keep hoping right?

edoc · #49 Post by **edoc** » Mon 16 Jan 2006, 19:49

puppypilgrim wrote:Where it shows that our PCIID 11ab:1faa Trendware card actually works with ndiswrapper but with the Marvell 8335 driver instead of the 8000c.

I have tried that one and it did not work for me but perhaps you will have better luck.

It was earlier in the process here so I may have missed something then that you will get and if/when it works I can follow your lead.

doc

puppypilgrim · #50 Post by **puppypilgrim** » Mon 16 Jan 2006, 20:06

I understand. The whole process seems a bit of a crap shoot for me even with all the excellent assistance from the forum.

edoc · #51 Post by **edoc** » Tue 17 Jan 2006, 00:39

puppypilgrim wrote:I understand. The whole process seems a bit of a crap shoot for me even with all the excellent assistance from the forum.

Back when I had the misfortune of managing a older Apple Mac system for a political campaign I spoke with a senior Apple support person. I asked how to resolve a certain problem and he said to reload things in a different order. I asked him which order. He said "Just try different orders until it works."

I asked if their OS was science or voodoo and he confessed that no one knew how it worked any more because it had been patched so many times.

I fear that Linux is dancing on the edge of that precipice.

At the moment I believe that it is possible to know what will work with what and why, it's just that the train is racing so fast down the track that no one wants to slow down to figure out why the cars keep banging into one another.

Somewhere there are a couple of folks in a LUG or someplace who understand the workings of ndiswrapper and the different Linux releases and Puppy well enough to work it out but it just hasn't risen to the attention of those holding that knowledge, so we just stumble through guessing and guessing and hope we guess right and that we correctly recall what works so it may be duplicated ... and then the Linux release changes, the Puppy version changes, the ndiswrapper version changes and 100 new variables enter the equation ... and that doesn't include the impact of different host hardware (apart from the many differing wireless nic configurations).

Puppy needs a wireless guru team who can test and certify a handful of currently available reasonably priced wireless nics for each Puppy release (providing a matrix for which version of ndiswrapper and which nic chipset they were approving).

I just don't see any other way to fix this debilitating problem.

doc

puppypilgrim · #52 Post by **puppypilgrim** » Tue 17 Jan 2006, 19:02

edoc,

I got a chance to try the different drivers for the Marvell chipset yesterday night. For clarity of anyone comparing approaches to getting wi-fi working, this was the procedure I used.

BIOS Pnp=No

Unzip and place all Windows drivers in the ~ directory.

These were the drivers represent along with their attendant .inf, .sys and .cat files (I was trying three different sets of Windows 2K/XP drivers downloaded from the Marvell website):

mrv8000c
mrv8335
mrv8335a

Download and install Perl using Pupget.

At the command line in a console session:

ndiswrapper -i driver_name
#installs the Windows driver

ndiswrapper -d 11ab:1faa driver_name
# this associates the driver with the pci_id device

ndiswrapper -l
# this lists whether the driver is present and installed

modprobe ndiswrapper
#this loads the ndiswrapper module

iwconfig
#with luck this should show a wlan0 working
#no such luck with me

ifconfig
#shows network communications in place
#eth0 for my NIC\LAN card only

(Tried WAG at this point and of course nothing worked. However WAG reported that wireless card was detected and running).

dmesg
#reported that Windows driver was not loaded properly and appeared
#to show an irq conflict

(In a flash of misguided brilliance I removed my NIC\LAN card thinking that it may remove any potential conflict with the system. Next I even moved the wireless card from one PCI slot to another PCI slot - in case the PCI slot happened to have died without me knowing it. No avail. Still nothing. Nada. Zip). What next?

Then I rebooted the computer and watched the BIOS carefully. I saw the peripherals being identified with assigned irq numbers in the BIOS startup sequence except the IRQ column for device 11ab:1faa (the Trendware card) always showed "NA" whereas all the other peripherals were typically assigned IRQs from 9 to 13. Same result no matter which PCI slot I put it in.

This has lead me to think that somehow the Trendware card expects to play with a BIOS set to PnP OS = Yes in order to communicate. I was not able to test this as it was too late for me to keep working on the computer.

However, all three sets of drivers failed to get the wireless NIC to work. BTW, if ndiswrapper installs a driver correctly, it will create a subdirectory at /etc/ndiswrapper/driver_name. In this directory will be a copy of the driver_name.inf, driver_name.sys and a .conf file which contains a bunch of text for running the driver I guess.

If you wish to re-install and try a different driver, you must:

modprobe -r ndiswrapper
#unloads the ndiswrapper module

ndiswrapper -e driver_name
#this removes the driver_name

(I found that I had to manually delete the driver directory at
/etc/ndiswrapper/driver_name as ndiswrapper would still report the driver as being loaded.

Anyways, I am ready to toss the Trendware card to my wife's windows PC now and wait to get another Puppy compatible wireless NIC later.

puppypilgrim · #53 Post by **puppypilgrim** » Tue 17 Jan 2006, 22:46

edoc,

I have downloaded the latest version of ndiswrapper v1.8 and requested assistance from the Puppy Masters in compiling this application and converting it to a DotPup so we can try it with the three drivers from Marvell.

I am not skilled enough to compile applications as yet.

edoc · #54 Post by **edoc** » Thu 19 Jan 2006, 03:08

Interesting thread here re. a usb wireless nic:

http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic ... highlight=

doc

Guest · #55 Post by **Guest** » Sun 12 Feb 2006, 18:24

Here's the commands I ran (dont knwo if this work on all distros):

Install commands:
(you'll need the win98 drivers from Trendnet for the 423-PI driver and place it under /etc/ndiswrapper)

linux:/etc/ndiswrapper # ndiswrapper -i Mrv8000c.INF
Installing mrv8000c

linux:/etc/ndiswrapper # ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
mrv8000c driver present, hardware present

linux:/etc/ndiswrapper # ndiswrapper -d 104c:9066 mrv8000c
Driver 'mrv8000c' is used for '104C:9066'

linux:/etc/ndiswrapper # modprobe ndiswrapper

linux:/etc/ndiswrapper # iwlist wlan0 scan

linux:/etc/ndiswrapper # dhcpcd wlan0

linux:/etc/ndiswrapper # modprobe ndiswrapper

Startup commands:
(card doesn't work after reboot, maybe you can script the following commands)
linux:/etc/ndiswrapper # modprobe ndiswrapper

linux:/etc/ndiswrapper # dhcpcd wlan0

linux:/etc/ndiswrapper # iwconfig wlan0 essid NETGEAR

edoc · #56 Post by **edoc** » Mon 13 Feb 2006, 18:55

Anonymous wrote:Here's the commands I ran (dont knwo if this work on all distros):

Install commands:
(you'll need the win98 drivers from Trendnet for the 423-PI driver and place it under /etc/ndiswrapper)

Which version of ndiswrapper did you use? I am told that some are more reliable and/or more Puppy compatible than others.

Also, found a related discussion here:

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/medi ... x.php/List

Card: Trendnet TEW-423PI (rev 03)

* Chipset: Marvell Technilogy GroupLtd
* pciid: 11ab:1faa
* Driver: Used the XP drivers included in the CDROM. The card seems alittle laggy, but other than that it works. I did see some hangs when I did a couple of ifup/ifdown. With the latest drivers for W98 (see: http://www.trendnet.com/asp/download_ma ... iFile=4690), this card work with any probleme.

doc

tillerman · #57 Post by **tillerman** » Sat 04 Mar 2006, 22:51

Gentlemen. This is a long thread, and I am not quite sure if this is relevant, but still: Beware! The wifi-pcmciacard named "TRENDnet TEW-421PC" comes in two versions with different chipsets!. The difference is camouflaged well by TRENDnet. Look on the back, on the S/N bar-code label, it only shows there.
The ACX100-card is marked "TEW-421PC" and is identified by #lspci as 104c:9066 (probably cipset ACX111). This works in Puppy with ndiswrapper and wifi-beta (I don

edoc · #58 Post by **edoc** » Mon 06 Mar 2006, 23:52

[quote="tillerman"]Gentlemen. This is a long thread, and I am not quite sure if this is relevant, but still: Beware! The wifi-pcmciacard named "TRENDnet TEW-421PC" comes in two versions with different chipsets!. The difference is camouflaged well by TRENDnet. Look on the back, on the S/N bar-code label, it only shows there.
The ACX100-card is marked "TEW-421PC" and is identified by #lspci as 104c:9066 (probably cipset ACX111). This works in Puppy with ndiswrapper and wifi-beta (I don

edgecrusher64 · #59 Post by **edgecrusher64** » Sat 24 Jun 2006, 02:01

I was trying to get my Trendnet wireless card to work in an old laptop and was able to get it working under Puppy2.01 by following the suggestions in this post. Thanks for doing all the research and putting it in one place!

Config:
Gateway SOLO 9100 E4.0 laptop
Trendnet TEW-421PC H/W:B1 (Marvell chipset)
Yes, I had to use ndiswrapper, but at least that got it working. I used the mrv8000.* driver for windows xp off the CD that came with the card.

Massif · #60 Post by **Massif** » Sat 05 Aug 2006, 00:35

Hello all. I've been reading over this thread and it has really helped me understand ndiswrapper a lot better.

I'm not running Puppy Linux, but I figured someone here might still be able to help.

I've got the TEW-423PI H/W:B1 card and I've been struggling with the Mrv8000c drivers. They install fine with ndiswrapper. However, when I get to the "modprobe ndiswrapper" step, my terminal session freezes and I can't even Ctrl+C out of the process. After closing the terminal window and opening a new one, I ran dmesg and got these results:

Code: Select all

ndiswrapper version 1.18 loaded (preempt=yes,smp=yes)
ndiswrapper: driver mrv8000c (Marvell,09/17/2004,3.1.0.19) loaded
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:0a.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
ndiswrapper: using irq 21
wlan0: vendor: ''
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:40:f4:f5:e4:47 using driver mrv8000c, 11AB:1FAA.5.conf
ndiswrapper (set_encr_mode:684): setting encryption mode to 6 failed (C00000BB)
wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA

here are the contents of my /etc/network/interfaces

Code: Select all

auto lo eth0 wlan0
iface lo inet loopback


iface eth0 inet static
  address 192.168.1.25
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  network 192.168.1.0
  broadcast 192.168.1.255
  gateway 192.168.1.1

iface wlan0 inet static
  address 192.168.1.25
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  network 192.168.1.0
  broadcast 192.168.1.255
  gateway 192.168.1.1
  wireless_essid MySSID
  wireless_key MyKey
  wireless_channel 6
  wireless_mode managed
pre-up modprobe -f ndiswrapper
post-down rmmod ndiswrapper

and the contents of the 11ab:1faa.5.conf file:

Code: Select all

NdisVersion|0x50001
Environment|1
BusType|5
class_guid|4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318
mac_address|XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
driver_version|Marvell,09/17/2004,3.1.0.19

DriverRel|09/17/2004
DriverVer|3.1.0.19
FragThsd|2346
PowerMode|0
Preamble|3
RTSThsd|2346
TxWepKey|
WepKey1|
WepKey2|
WepKey3|
WepKey4|

I'm within range of both a WEP enabled router and a WPA enabled router. The only other thing I can think of is to put the WEP key into the 11ab:1faa.5.conf file or turn off encryption on one of the routers to see how that works.

tempestuous · #61 Post by **tempestuous** » Sat 05 Aug 2006, 10:32

ndiswrapper is supposed to be an easy solution, but as this thread shows, it's far from.
Since you guys seem to be comfortable with basic command line usage, why not try my Marvell wifi driver dotpup from http://www.dotpups.de/dotpups/Wifi/wireless-drivers/

Massif · #62 Post by **Massif** » Sat 05 Aug 2006, 15:21

I got it working! I found a site that said they used ndiswrapper version 1.20rc1 with the mrv8000c drivers and it worked for them. I downloaded the 1.20rc1 source, compiled it and now my card is working perfectly! It's connected without encryption. I haven't tried connecting with encryption, but it doesn't really matter because the system is going to my girlfriend and her wifi is unencrypted.

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(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

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