# Some Prism2 info for generic cards

## stonent

There's a whole series of identical generic Prism2 cards mass produced for different manufacturers.

The easiest way to recognize them is to see the end. They are pretty much perfectly flat with a single indicator light. US Robotics 2410, Belkin, NDC, Eumitcom, SMC 2632, and a whole bunch of others resell them. Here's a pic: http://www.guerrilla.net/reference/80211_mod/SMC2632_antenna_mod/fresh_cut_wide_angle.jpg

Anyway, mine never worked with the orinoco_cs drivers, it would never associate and most of the wireless commands gave me errors about something being unsupported, but by switching to the linux-wlan-ng drivers it finally works.

cardctl info shows:

```
PRODID_1="IEEE 802.11b"

PRODID_2="Wireless LAN PC Card/11M"

PRODID_3="Version 01.02"

PRODID_4=" "

MANFID=0156,0002

FUNCID=6
```

So if anyone has a card resembling the one shown that you can't get working feel free to ask me.  Before asking though make sure that your card does look like that one, (minus the hole) and the card lights up due to pcmcia being initialized.

The easiest way is:

```
emerge linux-wlan-ng
```

edit your /etc/pcmcia/config

Find:

```
device "orinoco_cs"

class "network" module "orinoco_cs"
```

Change to:

```
device "orinoco_cs"

class "network" module "prism2_cs"
```

Then just search for the config files as listed on linux-wlan website and plug in the essid and wep key.

----------

## David916

This looks promising, my manufacturer id is identical to yours, so I'm hoping this will work. The card is a lucent minipci 802.11b card. It is detected as 

```
Intersil PRISM2 Reference Design 11Mb/s WLAN Card
```

Hopefully I can get it working.

----------

## David916

I tried your instructions but haven't had much success. Shouldn't the wlan0 device be created automatically? I know it will work for my machine because knoppix does it flawlessly. Any help is much appreciated. I may not be able to reply quickly though b/c I dont have internet hooked up at my apartment yet so I can only get online at work.

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## stonent

Sorry, I only have info on cards like mine. (see above) I have not tried any others.

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## stonent

You might try loading the prism2_pci (I think that's it) driver.

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## kicker69101

I have a linksys wpc11 (thats a prism2 chipset). And to get it to work with gentoo was a trip. First I had to download the pcmcia-cs manually and just configure it (no make all or make install). Then I had to download the linux-wlan-ng manually and manually install it. With the linux-wlan-ng I had to down version 0.1.16pre10. The latest (version 0.2) never worked on the p80211 module. I kept getting errors every time I would modprobe it.

Now the generic prism2 driver seems to work just fine for all prism2 cards (minus the orinco).

----------

## Seraphin

Hi!

I've got an PCMCIA USRobotic2410 Wireless card.

cardctl info give me this

```

PRODID_1=U.S. Robotics

PRODID_2=IEEE 802.11b PC-CARD

PRODID_3="Version 01.02"

PRODID_4=""

MANFID=0156,0002

FUNCID=6

```

I did everything you wrote. I reboot and then... nothing  :Sad: 

ifconfig give me just lo interface

I try 

```

modprobe prism2_cs

```

no error, but ifconfig don't change.

I reboot and I can see this while Gentoo is starting pcmcica 3.2.4:

(with two beep)

```

cardmgr[549]: watching 1 sockets

cardmgr[549]: starting, version is 3.2.4

cardmgr[549]: socket 0: U.S. Robotics IEEE 802.11b PC-CARD

cardmgr[549]: executing ´modprobe prism2_cs´

cardmgr[549]: executing ´./wlan-ng start wlan0´

cardmgr[549]: + modprobe: Can't locate module wlan0

cardmgr[549]: + ./wlan-ng: line 128: _fwload: command not found

cardmgr[549]: + ./wlan-ng: line129 Firmware failed to load for device wlan0: command not found

cardmgr[549]: + wlanctl-ng: No such device

cardmgr[549]: + ./wlan-ng: line 498: error: Autojoin indicated failure!: command not found

cardmgr[549]: start cmd exited with status 1

```

(it's very strange because after the next reboot, it tells me "socket 0: Anonymious memory, modprobe memory_cs and so on..."   :Crying or Very sad: 

lsmod gives:

```

prism2_cs 0 (unused)

p80211  1 [prism2_cs]

ds 1 [prism2_cs]

i82365 1

pcmcia_core 0 [prism2_cs ds i82365]

```

I've got 

/etc/wlan/wlan.conf

/etc/wlan/wlan0.conf

/etc/wlan/wlancfg-DEFAULT.conf

/etc/wlan/wlancfg-ANY.conf

/etc/conf.d/wlan.conf

/etc/conf.d/wlancfg-DEFAULT.conf

In /etc/conf.d/net I've got

iface_eth0="dhcpcd"

iface_wlan0="dhcpcd"

(In fact, I've got a Compaq Presario laptop with a Conexant LanFinity Ethernet card on IRQ 9 and a pcmcia Wireless card on the same IRQ)

I don't know what to add...

Just ask if I forgot something

I've read a lot of topics in these gentoo forums about wireless pcmcia cards but nothing works for me  :Neutral: 

But under Mandrake 9.0, my card is working fine without any special configuration.

Thanks in advance for your help  :Smile: 

----------

## Seraphin

 *kicker69101 wrote:*   

> I have a linksys wpc11 (thats a prism2 chipset). And to get it to work with gentoo was a trip. First I had to download the pcmcia-cs manually and just configure it (no make all or make install). Then I had to download the linux-wlan-ng manually and manually install it. With the linux-wlan-ng I had to down version 0.1.16pre10. The latest (version 0.2) never worked on the p80211 module. I kept getting errors every time I would modprobe it.
> 
> Now the generic prism2 driver seems to work just fine for all prism2 cards (minus the orinco).

 

I did exactly the same with linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1-pre10

No error message while ./Configure make all and make install 

Then I try modprobe prism2_cs and nothing... 

I reboot and still "Anonymious memory"

I'm going to compile my kernel (2.4.20-gentoo-r6) again...   :Mad: 

(wireless is already activated and pcmcia desactivated; don't worry about that, I've read lot of topics about it !)

----------

## kicker69101

when I tried to that ver of wlan-ng I was getting unresolved symbols in the p80211 module.  but when I went down versions it work just fine.   :Shocked: 

----------

## stonent

cp /etc/init.d/net.eth0 net.wlan0

will fix it.

[quote="Seraphin"] *kicker69101 wrote:*   

> cardmgr[549]: executing ´./wlan-ng start wlan0´
> 
> cardmgr[549]: + modprobe: Can't locate module wlan0

 

----------

## Seraphin

Ok, I just get my card working but don't ask me how I did it !   :Shocked: 

Now, my red led on my PCMCIA wireless card is shining (very beautifull) but unfortunately, that's not the primary use  :Wink: 

So I try o run iwconfig on it but I've got always this message:

Fonction not implemented 

Grrrrrrr   :Mad: 

The only tool I can use to configure my card is wlanctl-ng (something like that). But this tool is so difficult to understand and to use !

So I've got 2 questions:

1) How can I do to make iwconfig working with my card

2) case(answer1=='nullPointerException') switch: "How to use this wlanctl-ng config to configure a wireless with SSID=ANY, Managed or Ad-hoc 811b, dhcpc, no wep encryption

Thanks in advance  :Smile: 

----------

## wmckean

iwconfig only works for reading the current settings of the card, with prism2_cs.  I learned this the hard way.  I tried for days to get mine to work, then poured over the source code and learned it the hardway.  A few things:

To keep the card from showing up as a memory card, you have to put an entry into wlan-ng.conf, just like you would in /etc/pcmcia/config.

You then need to put your SSID and enable wlan0 in /etc/wlan/wlan.cfg.  Then create a wlancfg-SSID file in your /etc/wlan directory.  That is the only way to pass parameters to the prism2_cs module.

Don't worry about the errors when trying to download the firmware or loading modules that don't exist.  That happens on mine too, but the card is working fine.

----------

