# Belkin Wireless Notebook Network Card F506020 ver.2

## tdb

Anyone know how to get one of these working? PCMCIA-CS lists it as partially supported, but it doesn't work on my machine. I tried linux-wlan-ng, and scouered all of google and usenet for a solution, nothing. There are conflicting reports about exactly what chipset is in the thing, it's either Orinoco or PrismII, I can't find a straight answer. 

Any help?

----------

## stefanvt

I don't have a wireless network (yet) but I was led to believe that the Belkin cards worked by this link

I hope this helps you out.

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## tdb

I found that website, and it helped a little bit. I'm trying to find the Orinoco_plx driver. The problem is that he said his distro automatically found it after a firmware upgrade. I'm not sure we have the same card (mine says "ver.2"), and I don't know what distro he is running. Gentoo with pcmcia-cs doesn't automatically find it. The PCMCIA-CS people say it is supported by them, but it doesn't work. No modules are loaded automatically when I put it in. ( I can't tell if it beeps since I don't have the sound working, the terminal window doesn't give me any indication of a sound) Both LED's are lit continuously once cardmgr sees it.

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## pens

I have one of those cards. All i did was emerge pcmcia-cs and linux-wlan-ng and it just "works". Does your network require an SSID?

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## pens

I have one of those cards. All i did was emerge pcmcia-cs and linux-wlan-ng and it just "works". Does your network require an SSID?

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## pens

I have one of those cards. All i did was emerge pcmcia-cs and linux-wlan-ng and it just "works". Does your network require an SSID?

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## tdb

Didn't work. It turns out that I have a "ver.2" after the model number on my card. I called Belkin today, and they said that the chipset is different in the "ver.2" cards. Apparently there are two versions of this card. The new chipset is a AT76C503A. This link gives the most info:

http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/HardwareComparison

I'll have to give it a try.

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## ROBOTHOUSE!

tdb, i tried that website... but the link to the belkin help here:

http://www.wireless.org.au/~jhecker/atmeldrv/atmeldrv.html

Just doesn't come up. It's the same website that always come up in my google searches as well. Yikes! I looked at a cached version of the page, but still can't d/l the stuff... I even tried:

http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net

to no avail. What am I doing wrong?!?!?! anyone get their belkin to work?

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## tdb

I've asked about it on the atmelwlandriver user mailing list, and am waiting to hear back. I'm going to give this maybe a week, because the Officemax return policy is 14 days. (bought it last sunday) I've complied the atmelwlandriver, when I modprobe the drivers, I get "operation not permitted" errors. There is one driver wv(sonething) or fvn(sonthing) that will load, but hangs on "initializing." (when I lsmod) The card works great in windows. I'm tempted to email someone with that seattlewireless.net website to try to get help. Does yours say "ver.2" on it?

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## ROBOTHOUSE!

Yeah, mine says "ver.2" after "model no.F5D6020" 

Of course the weird thing is that there's a sticker lower that says "ver. 100" anyone know anything about that?

I'm still stupmed cause I think it loads the card thinking it's a memory card or soemthing... ie. loads "memory_cs" and I can't get anything to show up. Weird, eh?

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## tdb

After a week of googling and sending random emails, I got it working. Here is a preliminary, rough write-up. I figured I'd get this posted asap, so there are probably mistakes and errors. I'll just edit the post later.

You can email me for help with this, but I really don't know much of

anything, so I doubt I can help. I recommend you seek out help at one of

the links below.

The Belkin Wireless Notebook Network Card, Model: F5D6020 ver.2 is the

second version of Belkin's pcmcia wireless lan cards. The first version

appears to have used the prism2 chipset, and was therefore supported

pretty easily in Linux by pcmcia-cs and linux-wlan-ng with the

orinoco_cs driver. The "ver.2" part of this card has a new chipset, an

Atmel AT76C502 chipset which uses the pcmf502rd driver (I saw this

somewhere on the net, I might try some of the other drivers just to see

if there is another driver that works better).

Here is what I did to get it working on my machine.

1. I run Gentoo 1.4.rc2 with Kernel 2.4.20, patched with ACPI.I compiled

a kernel with pcmcia turned off, and wireless support turned on. (no

drivers were selected, though). I rebooted and loaded this new kernel. I

added an "extraversion" to the Makefile so that I can keep track of the

many test kernels I made while trying to get this card working.

2. I emerged (installed for the non-Gentoo people) pcmcia-cs, and it

built with no problems. I added it to start in my default runlevel, and

added i82365 and ds to my modules.autoload file. Regardless, make sure

you have pcmcia-cs installed and working.

3. I downloaded the open source Atmel drivers from

atmelwlanproject.sourceforge.net, uncompressed it into my /tmp folder.

4. If you did a "make mrproper" in your kernel directory after you

installed your new kernel, you need to do a "make dep" to make some

files the Atmel drivers need from the kernel source directory.

(something like versions.h or something) The Atmel driver compile will

fail if you don't do this. It will give some error message about

versions or something while making reference to the kernel directory, it

want's the kernel stuff. Just do a "make dep".

5. Read the README.It is important to note that the modules mentioned in

the readme and some other places have different filenames then what is

actually made and used. The only new modules that appeared in my kernel

module directory all began with "pcmf." These are the only modules you

need to worry about.

6. I also had to edit a source file to get it to work. The first few

times I tried to set this up, I tried to load the driver manually with

"modprobe pcmf502rd" but would get an "Operation not permitted" message.

When I did a "dmesg | grep pcmf*" to look at the kernel messages, I saw

an error that referenced the pcmf502rd driver and said "CardServices

release does not match!" I recalled seeing on a website dealing with the

Atmel chipset (but in a different manufacturer) where someone had the

same message and had to edit the sourcefiles and remove a line. I went

into the /atmelwlandriver/src/Pcmcia_Pci director and looked around

until I found a line in the fastvnet_cs.c file that contained the phrase

"CardServices release does not match!" (it's line 711) I made a backup

of the file, and removed everything on the next line (line 712) except

for the ";" (I lined the semicolon up with the beginning of the line

above it.) I then continued on with the next step.

6. Did a "make realclean" (just a habit of mine, I don't think this is

necessary.)

7. Did a "make config" and said yes to "build all." (this driver

supports PCMCIA and USB, and possibly other devices, so it builds a lot

of different modules. I'm not sure exactly what I need, so I just made

everything.)

8. Did a "make clean" (as per the instructions in the README)

9. Did a "make all"

10. Did a "make install"

11. Edited the /etc/pcmcia/atmel.conf and added this to the bottom:

card "Belkin F5D6020v2 WLAN"

  version "Belkin", "11Mbps-Wireless-Notebook-Network-Adapter"

  bind "pcmf502rd"

This info comes from the output of "cardctl ident".

12. Did an /etc/init.d/pcmcia restart, (or whatever you do on your

system to get pcmcia-cs to reset itself.

13. Put the card in, did a "lsmod" and there was the module, pcmf502rd,

loaded and reported as unused.

14. I did ifconfig eth1 up.

15. Then DHCPCD eth1, and I had internet. Lsmod shows the module as

active. iwconfig (part of the wireless-tools package, I think) doesn't

show any interfaces with "wireless extensions", so I don't think I have

the thing set up fully yet, but it gets me to the internet.

Continuing issues:

Wireless extensions seem not to be working. (as evidenced by "iwconfig")

I don't know what these are, or how to use them, so it's probably my

fault. There are some other configs in the /etc/wlan that appear to be

from the wireless-tools package. I think the solution lies in there.

Credits:

the linux-wlan-ng mail list for giving more info on the driver to use.

www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/HardwareComparison for pointing me to

the atmelwlandriver project.

Belkin tech support for saying the chipset was the same as the F5D6050.

The atmelwlandriver mail list for the rest of the setup.

Other individuals I'll credit when they tell me it's ok to put their names. For now, thanks Chuck and Joerg!

Others I have probably forgotten, sorry!

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## ROBOTHOUSE!

No dice... I followed those instructions to the tee... My card is still being picked up as a memory_cs module, weird? Here's the output for lsmod with the card in:

Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted

memory_cs               9636   0  (unused)

ext3                   65320   1  (autoclean)

jbd                    43756   1  (autoclean) [ext3]

ds                      7112   4  [memory_cs]

i82365                 25568   2

pcmcia_core            35680   0  [memory_cs ds i82365]

and here's lsmod without it in:

Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted

ext3                   65320   1  (autoclean)

jbd                    43756   1  (autoclean) [ext3]

ds                      7112   4

i82365                 25568   2

pcmcia_core            35680   0  [ds i82365]

any suggestions? Yikes! I'm past my return time....

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## reaz82

when you type in the atmel.conf file make sure you do not remove the declaration for the pcmf502rd module..

device "pcmf502rd"

    class "network" module "pcmf502rd"

those lines should be there along with many other after a fresh

compilation of the atmelwlandrivers.. 

you can delete all else and type the following at the end

card "Belkin F5D6020u (aka. F5D6020 ver. 2) yada yada"

   manfid 0x01bf, 0x3302 // this line did the trick for me

   bind "pcmf502rd"

the manfid can be found by doing a simple cardctl ident right after merging

pcmcia-cs.. after u finish this just do a /etc/init.d/pcmcia restart.. there should be no errors at this point and cardmgr should load up.. do a lsmod to make sure u dont have any other wireless card driver running.. do a cardctl reset or cardctl eject.. then insert your card and it should light up and there should be a beep.. do lsmod and you should be able to see pcmf502rd there 'unused' though.. if u do an ifconfig -a you should see an eth1... 

the rest can be explained later

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## blasterboy

I followed all of the instructions above (I think) and I can definitely see an improvement, but when the cardmgr finds the Belkin card now, it attempts to load the pcmf502rd driver.

This hangs the pc for about a minute, after which the following error is displayed :

```
pcmf502rd: RequestIRQ: Resource in use

Adapter - REGDomain !!! 0x41
```

I disabled pcmcia in the kernel as instructed, and have added the description and manfid as in the above mails. What else can be using this IRQ resource ?

I am testing this on a Dell laptop "latitude cpx 500G" with bios A14 and apm enabled (no apic) and gentoo gamin-sources for kernel.

A

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## imckee

I'm trying to get my Belkin F5D6020v2 working too.  I'm running gs-sources (2.4.22_pre2-gss) on a HP ZE4300 Pavilion laptop, I've emerged pcmcia-cs, and downloaded, compiled, and installed atmelwlandriver v2.1.1.  

I get hung up right around where blasterboy (last post) does, after following tbd's tutorial:

1) I enter the command "/etc/runlevels/boot/pcmcia restart"

2) I insert the Belkin card.

3) The laptop hangs indefinitely.

I haven't tried SSH'ing into the laptop to see if it's really gone, but I think it is.  I've let it sit for 5 minutes and it never comes back.

I can modprobe for the pcmf502rd driver independently of cardmgr, and the module gets loaded fine.  I'm not sure why (or if) the computer is hanging when cardmgr tries to modprobe for this module.  Does anyone know how to bring up and configure eth1 (eth0 is my builtin natsemi ethernet) without using the cardmgr daemon?  Or does anyone know why it's hanging?

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## tdb

Seems like more people are referencing this thread, so I'll do a quick followup. I got wireless extensions working with this card. A lot of the problems I had stemmed from one of two problems:

1. Unresolved symbols and messy insmods. The main culprit with this was the "Set extra module version information [y/N]" setting when you do "make config". Once I started saying "No" to this, most all of my problems went away. Sloppy kernel recompiles also played a minor role in this. I was in the habit of only recompiling the modules when I made a module change to the kernel, and not redoing the whole thing. After a day of fustration on my server, I realize this was a bad idea. It led to several module problems, including ones with this card.

2. Be sure to verify your card has an entry in /etc/pcmcia/atmel.conf, and make sure it is accurate. This was what kept me from seeing eth1. It took me about two and a half to three weeks to finally figure this out. And it really is just that easy.

Everything works fine with my F5D6020.ver2.

Hope this helps.

FOLLOWUP: I basically just rewrote this post here:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=65737

(P.S. the Atmel chipsets don't support all the features that the prism ones do, like rf_mon "monitor" mode and hostap. This is a limitation in the firmware and there is no way around it as of now.)

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## blasterboy

To follow up on my story, I have several times recompiled my kernel, and in the end I enabled PCMCIA in the kernel (else my card wouldn't be recognised, and added Wifi Radio support as well, but no cards).

I can now get the card to be recognised by the kernel, still get resource usage errors, but can at least now use the 'lvnet' tool to set the card.

Yesterday evening I finally managed for about 10 seconds to have a connection to my base station (using WEP 128bit, so had to find out about /sbin/keygen to generate the key from a shared secret). However, I lost connection once I did a startx into gnome. Perhaps a bad connection, I was quite a bit away from my base station.

I will continue to test and see if I can get a more reliable connection. Anyway, doesn't look as if pcmcia picks up on the atmel.conf configuration...

As tdb states, no real guides to compiling and setting this up - just his one (and thank you for that !!!).  :Very Happy: 

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## tdb

No problem. You're welcome. You said it works somewhat with kernel pcmcia, and not with pcmcia-cs. Judging by the error message, (and drum roll here as Captain Obvious rolls in) something else wants that io address. Have you tried compiling a vanilla kernel with external pcmcia-cs and running with that? Can you grep thru dmesg and /var/log/messages for that address to see what else is grabbing it? Does iwconfig show anything?

I eventually just gave up on the Atmel and bought the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Adapter MN-520. It has a prism2 chip and is $50 at Best Buy. You can't beat that price! Plus, I want to do some serious wardriving and wreak havoc on my bar review class with HostAP and FakeAP.

[edit]

Looks like Best Buy may have the original belkin f5d6020 in stock for $50. (website) That card has the prism2 chip, IIRC.

[/edit]

I still have and use the Belkin, though.

Let me know what happens with the vanilla kernel. I'll try to help from there.

Oh yeah, the new atmel.opts file uses pcmf502re for the Belkin F5d6020.ver2. I always thought it was the pcmf502rd. Try using the pcmf502re and see what happens.

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## blasterboy

I was actually thinking of buying another wi-fi card if this goes on much longer, but since I only use my laptop at home infrequently (it's usually at work), i only test in the weekends and so there's no big urgency to replace it.

Now that you mention Captain Obvious, I did think of conflicts, but thought that stuff like that only happened in windows (thinking that linux has better resource management). I will do the check and see if another something is using that address - something I should have done already   :Embarassed: 

Also the different driver is worth trying out - who knows ? I'll post the results when I have tried them out.

Again, thanks,

A

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## tdb

Hey Blasterboy, I just got a radio shack flyer listing the Linksys WPC11 for $50 in the stores. Looks like it's on closeout, and isn't available on line. It has an Intersil radio and is well supported in linux by pcmcia-cs, wlan-ng, and hostap.

P.S. I love the Avitar.

[edit] Oh wait, you're in Belgium. Nevermind.

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## blasterboy

Hey there tdb,

I haven't found the time yet to test some more, but upcoming weekend is a long weekend here so hopefully I'll have some time then.

Yup, I'm in Belgium so we don't really have a Best Buy or similar hyper market tech vendor - either big chains that sell everything including computer (but only selections) or little mom- and pop shops that sell only computer stuff and lots of it. They don't have large inventories and don't usually do bargain shopping.

Thanks for the tip anyway, though !

A

PS - In case you didn't know, the Avatar is from the movie "The Fifth Element" - excellent movie !!!

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## tdb

[quote="blasterboy"PS - In case you didn't know, the Avatar is from the movie "The Fifth Element" - excellent movie !!![/quote]

Oh, I know. Zorg. Garry Oldman played him very well in that movie.

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## blasterboy

I managed to get the card working now, but only using the supplied lvnet program (at first).

I searched some more, and recently wrote a smallish bat file (I can't really call it a script really). My card is still not recognised when I boot up, but now I start it via the following code, logged in as root :

```

iwconfig eth0 essid SSID channel 11 mode Managed key restricted xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

iwconfig eth0

```

I can surf and rsync from root, but obviously this is a hassle and not really secure...

I mucked about, created a WLAN-SSID.conf file in /etc/conf.d, in WLAN.conf I pointed it to this WLAN-SSID.conf file.

It refuses to boot initially. What am I doing wrong ?  Do I need to do more stuff with iwconfig ?

Does anybody have an idea or suggestions ? They would be most appreciated...

A.

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## tdb

Can you post the output from dmesg and /var/log/messages after you plug the card in? You're having the same problems I used to.

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## krazo

Get the drivers at atmelwlandriver.sf.net they work great.

EDIY: I meant the newest snapshot. Extension support seem to be minimal at most but it can connect using WEP.

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## jkalderash

I'm trying to get the same card working with 2.6.0-test3 - I started a new topic here.  Please help if you can - it seems that the kernel supplies atmel drivers, but I can't get the card to do anything but blink (and I was pretty psyched that it blinked at all!).

-Laura

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## jkalderash

Hmm, the atmelwlandriver site says they support the new kernel - does anyone know how to download the new builds?  The CVS thing baffles me.

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## krazo

Ok here is what I did to get my Belkin card working in 2.6

Compile the driver as a module and make sure firmware loader driver is also in.

Grab the firmware from the site listed in the description for the atmel wlan driver and install it using the manual loading instructions as hotplug does not support PCMCIA (yet?).

Copy net.eth0 in /etc/init.d to net.eth1 and add the firmware loading line right above this line:

```
/sbin/dhcpcd ${dhcpcd_IFACE} ${IFACE} >/dev/null || {
```

This will load the firmware right before dhcpcd gets activated. It then should work..

I assume you have already setup PCMCIA to recognize the card and load the module when it is inserted.

Hope this helps![/b]

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## jkalderash

Hmm, I'm still getting nothing except for blinking.  Are you using the same card, F5D6020v2? Which firmware are you using?  I managed to get it to work a little (i.e., it blinked) with at76c502e.  Hmm, I'm just bubbling with questions tonight... ooh, one more: why do you need the firmware loader driver - I thought that was just for hotplug loading?  I added it as a module but it had no effect.  Thanks for the help!

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## krazo

 *jkalderash wrote:*   

> Hmm, I'm still getting nothing except for blinking.  Are you using the same card, F5D6020v2? Which firmware are you using?  I managed to get it to work a little (i.e., it blinked) with at76c502e.  Hmm, I'm just bubbling with questions tonight... ooh, one more: why do you need the firmware loader driver - I thought that was just for hotplug loading?  I added it as a module but it had no effect.  Thanks for the help!

 

Yup I have F5D6020 v2. I used the D firmware, although I remember trying out E and having it work as well.

The firmware driver is required to load the firmware onto the card. Check for CONFIG_FW_LOADER in the kernel config. Did you add the proper lines to your /etc/pcmcia/config file to load up atmel_cs? Oh, and add in the CRC32 module too!

Hope you get this card working soon. The only gripe I have with it is that it doesn't support wireless-tools short of setting the SSID and WEP keys (at least I couldn't get it work with the power option etc).

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## jkalderash

I'm still getting squat.  What does your kernel config look like (are you using test3?)?  I was comparing my 2.4 and 2.6 configs (it worked fine in 2.4) and there was an option called CONFIG_NET_PCMCIA_RADIO which doesn't seem to exist in 2.6.  Do you have this option?  As it seems that the card is indeed communicating with the computer OK (hence blinkage), the only thing I can think is that perhaps the radio (?) is configured incorrectly.

Sorry to keep pestering you, but it's very frustrating that my card just blinks for 30 seconds and then gives up!  Btw, I upgraded to test4 today - exactly the same.  Grr!

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## swingarm

 *krazo wrote:*   

> Ok here is what I did to get my Belkin card working in 2.6
> 
> Compile the driver as a module and make sure firmware loader driver is also in.
> 
> Grab the firmware from the site listed in the description for the atmel wlan driver and install it using the manual loading instructions as hotplug does not support PCMCIA (yet?).
> ...

 

I'm getting this:

```

atmel_fw1: eth1 is not an Atmel interface

```

My card does have an Amtel chipset according to this: http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html  My card is a Gigafast WF-721-AEX.

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## bennerstul

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> I'm getting this:
> 
> Code:
> ...

 

I get the exact same thing and I have the Belkin F5D6020v2. 2 weeks on and off I have spent on this and the 2.6 kernel, still no luck whatsoever.

----------

## swingarm

After fooling with this for 5 days I said enough, I bought a Compaq Wireless Pcmcia Card(probably a rebranded Linksys) with a Prism2 chipset off of Ebay for $25.  I expect minimal problems(hopefully none) with this card.

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## bennerstul

http://www.houseofcraig.net/indx.php?belkin_howto.php

Just found that, best guide I have seen yet by far, will try it ASAP and report back.

----------

## kozmic

i got a 3com 3CREW62092B pcmcia card which i cant get working.

This is what i've done:

Compile kernel (2.4.22) without pcmcia, but the other stuff enabled.

emerged pcmcia-cs (cardmgr starts fine)

installed atmelwlandriver 2.1.2.2 , when inserting card i get "pcmf502r3: CardServices release does not match!" in dmesg.

So i try to remove the lines that was explained earlier in this thread (line number is changed in 2.1.2.2).

fastvnet_cs.c:

```

if (serv.Revision != CS_RELEASE_CODE)

{

;

}

```

When inserting card this stalls my laptop. have to hardreboot

I've tried the same with atmelwlandriver-ss-20021209, here the linenumber match btw, same results, stall my puter or get CardServices..

So where do I go from here? I have no clue what to do. 

Anyone got this card working? if so, how? kernel, drivers etc.. ?

----------

## bennerstul

Just got it to finally be recognized and can ping my gateway! For the record (mine as much as yours) here is my entire operation:

Kernel 2.6 (this is just for reference and to see how many dumb mistakes I made  :Smile: :

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> -Compiled PCMCIA into kernel (*) - Yenta and 82092.
> 
> -Compiled wireless-lan into kernel, but no drivers
> ...

 

START OVER:

Kernel2.4

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> -Compile gentoo-sources-2.4.20-r7 kernel
> 
> -Edit atmelwlandriver (using atmelwlandriver-ss-20030918) /src/Pcmcia_Pci/fastvnet.c
> ...

 

WORKS!

```

Appendix1.

   Build all N

   Extra module info: N

   debug version: N

   USB Drivers: No

   PCMCIA Drivers: Y

   rfmd driver: Y

   3com driver: N

   revision D driver: Y

   revision E driver: N

   504 driver: N

   miniPCI: N

   Applications: N

   command-line: N

   wxwindows: N

```

Some stuff here 

http://www.wireless.org.au/~jhecker/atmeldrv/atmeldrv.html

http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/news.html

http://www.houseofcraig.net/indx.php?belkin_howto.php

http://www.staticky.com/belkin.html

TO DO: Try the edited fastvnet.c in kernel 2.6 again... I am a real sucker...

----------

