Belkin PCI Wireless card not recognised

[Boneo]

Like any beginner it's the simple things that cause the most bother. I'm sure it's something simple but my Puppy does not seem to recognise my Belkin wireless card a PCI F5D7000uk.

Incidentally I've just got Puppy on a multisession CD which I produced using k3d on my Ubuntu PC. I'll have to add that any Linux is a new experience here.

Puppy's WAG says I haven't got a wireless card yet I'm using it now running Ubuntu. I would have liked to have given here a copy of dsmeg that I could have taken off with a memory stick but I didn't know how to produce a copy. dsmeg had lots of hardware information none that was obviously my wireless card but I couldn't cut a paste the text to show you here.

So before I can even start to sort out a driver or wrapper and network card settings etc I seem to have a hardware recognition issue.

How do I mount my wireless card and will it be ra0, wlan0 or eth0 or eth1?

[PaulBx1]

I'm a beginner too, however I'm pretty sure Puppy by itself supports only a couple of chipsets natively. Most people end up getting their drivers here.

You have to decide if you are going with a native linux driver, or ndiswrapper. There is also a decision whether you are using WEP or WPA. The readmes that come with the packages on that site are quite good...

For copying text, I select it in an rxvt window with the left mouse button, then in the browser window paste it with the center mouse button. Usually works.

[BlackAdder]

Boneo,
There seem to be several versions of that Belkin card with different chipsets. Can you post a copy of the results of running lspci in an rxvt window so that folks can work out which version of the card you have. with luck there will an entry with the value 14e4:4320 or 1814:0201.
BTW, which version of Puppy are you using?

[Boneo]

Thanks for your replies. Unfortunately my XP PC has become unstable perhaps because of the heat and my modest overclocking. So my attention has been rather diverted elsewhere with the appearance of the odd blue screen now and again.

I'm posting here using my Ubantu PC. I have the alternative of running Puppy 2.01 live on a multisession CD which as the next step I want to get connected to my WLAN.
I'm sorry but I'm still not able to give a copy of my rxvt. I can highlight the text with the left mouse button. Pressing the middle wheel repeats the command and the text is bigger. Pressing the right mouse button does not bring up a copy command as per Windoze. I want to copy the Puppy rxvt text to my memory stick so it's available when I boot into Ubuntu. Please explain again how I can copy rxvt text.

Incidentally Puppy froze when I inserted the memory stick and I had to reboot with it in.

lspci reports
00:09:01 class 0280 1814:0201 (rev 01)

Any help would be appreciated.

[BlackAdder]

Boneo,
The id's from lspci show the adapter as having the Ralink rt2500 chipset. tempestuous (forum name) has created drivers for the Ralink chips which can be found here. You should use the ralink-legacy.pup and follow the instructions in the associated readme (ralink-legacy_README.txt).
To paste text from rxvt into an application that supports the paste function, highlight the text in rxvt, switch to the other window and use paste. Clicking the middle mouse button while in the rxvt window pastes whatever is on the clipboard into rxvt; so you were both copying and pasting in rxvt.
No need to overclock your machine when using Puppy, it is fast already.

[Boneo]

My XP machine is now stable after lowering the CPU multiplier. I'll try pushing it back up when the room temperature is lower, well I'll have to running XP!!

Unfortunately on my Linux Ubuntu PC with Puppy running from a multisession CD
modprobe rt2500
gave Fatal module rt2500 not found.

As an alternative I tried
modprobe 80211 fatal Module 80211 not found
modprobe rate_control module rate_control not found
modprobe rt2500pci fatal Module rt2500 not found

Any further suggestions?

[BlackAdder]

It looks as though the dot pup was not successfully installed. During installation did you get pop-up windows saying that the file integrity was okay, install was successful etc.?

[Boneo]

I downloaded Puppy 2.01- seamonkey.iso onto my Ubuntu desktop. I received no error messages during a K3b burn of my multisession live CD and selected "Verify written data".

I've not seen anything else to question my copy of Puppy 2.01 but how would I perform a checksum test of my download?

Assuming there is nothing wrong with my Puppy copy, is there another reason for me being unable to activate my pci wireless card,

All of these commands produce the response, fatal Module...... not found

modprobe rt2500
modprobe rt2500pci
modprobe 80211
modprobe rate_control

Any more suggestions?

[BlackAdder]

Boneo,
No reason at the moment to doubt that your copy of 2.01 is basically okay. Where did you download the ralink-legacy dot pup to? Did it install properly? If it did, you should see the rt2500 module in /lib/modules/lib/2.6.16.7/wireless/ralink; that is where modprobe will look for it.
In case there has been a misunderstanding, the process should be something like this:

• Download ralink-legacy.pup to somewhere that Puppy can find it (e.g. to the root of your c: drive in Windows XP or put it onto a floppy or flash drive);
  Mount the drive holding the dot pup (use MUT) and open ROX - click the "ROX" button in MUT;
  Click on the dot pup file and respond to the questions in the pop-ups;
  Follow the instructions in the readme.

The module(s) resulting will be stored in the pup_save file at the end of the session.
Apologies if the instructions are too basic, but you did say you are "new".

[Boneo]

Thanks BlackAdder

Your instructions enabled me to get my Puppy to notice my Belkin ra2500 card. I had wrongly assumed that this recognition would have happened automatically. None of your advice is too simple and anyway others like me sometimes need all the help we can get.

It was only late last night that I returned to this Forum having devoted my afternoon to getting any of my microphones to work with my Asus A7A266-E mobo. One turned out to be faulty plus I discovered that if you aren't using an electret microphone you need a "microphone boost" option in the software.

I did start to configure my WLAN settings and I realised that I could input the settings using iwconfig or by using the WAG program from Settings.

It looks though as if I will be unable to input my WLAN's essid.

I had chosen to include the > character in my essid and whilst this was accepted under Ubuntu and my other 2 Windows PCs, Puppy dooesn't accept it. I get an error message using iwconfig and WAG removes the character.

Changing my essid in August when I will have returned from holiday, may be the solution.

[marksouth2000]

My XP machine is now stable after lowering the CPU multiplier. I'll try pushing it back up when the room temperature is lower, well I'll have to running XP!!

Overclocking most modern machines doesn't make them run Linux or any Unix any faster. Processors already spend most of their time waiting for memory or idling while the system is swapping. More memory makes Linux/Unix go faster, a few extra MHz does very little except improve clockspeed benchmarks.

The detailed explanation can be foud in any book on operating systems design written in the last 25 years or so, in the unlikely event that you don't believe me.

[PaulBx1]

Processors already spend most of their time waiting for memory or idling while the system is swapping.

Or waiting for I/O to complete.

I agree with Mark on this. Also, overclocking your CPU is much like upping the horsepower on a car engine while ignoring brakes, suspension, tires, etc. Yeah, you can do it, but it's likely to break something. At least your computer can't kill you like a car can.

Or it's like loading ammo using heavier charges of powder than recommended in the loading manuals. It's not a good thing when a gun blows up.

I spent most of my adult life as a computer hardware engineer. We designed the machines to a specific clock frequency, making sure all margins were maintained even with chip speed tolerances on the different circuits. We'd also make sure the machine would run with voltages higher and lower than normal, and with high temps. We did this to make sure users had a solid, reliable machine, because people don't like to fart around with flakey computer hardware.

[Boneo]

Thanks for the replies folks.
I have no intention of overclocking my Linux PC. Running Ubuntu or Puppy it seems fast enough. I'm impressed already with Linux and my aim over the coming months is to be less and less dependent running Bill G company's OS. After I had to phone Msoft every time I change my mobo was enough. Enough was enough. Who do they think they are? Surely they don't want everybody to be running a Windows OS on their PCs?

If we are talking about overclocking on an XP machine, I'd say that a 10% overclock is probably stable with my AMD Athlon. Who doesn't want Ferrari performance for Ford prices? With overclocking, XP loads quicker as do my applications.

The attraction of Puppy is that it's lean just as with a car you can increase performance by reducing weight.