# Spare wifi hardware put to good use.

## latexer

So here's the deal. No one else on the gentoo team is interested in focusing on the whole wireless thing. Which leaves me with *lots* of drivers that i'd love to keep maintained and add to portage. BUT, i currently have a somewhat limited hardware set, and therefore am sometimes at a loss to test some of the drivers.

However, i *really* don't like mooching off of people. It makes me feel all icky and gross on the inside. So if people have any spare wifi cards they don't need, it'd be great if you could lend or give (i prefer lend, i'll feel bad just accepting hardware) them up for a bit so i can test new drivers or keep current drivers in portage up to date. 

Here's the hardware i *DO* have already:

Cisco MiniPCI card

Prism2 based EnGenius PCMCIA card.

Orinoc Silver PCMCIA card.

MiniPCI Intel card (the Centrino, i just got it i'll be testing things soon)

Netgear MA411 (i think that's the model, it's the PCI Prism2 sitting in my box acting as my access point)

Things i don't have and really wish i could test:

Atheros card ( i actually got a MiniPCI atheros based card, but my thinkpad T30 has this annoying BIOS check and won't boot with "Unauthorized MiniPCI cards." A PCMCIA variant of these would be helpful )

802.11g Prism GT / Duete/ Indigo  for prism54 drivers

Atmel based adapter

rtl8180 based adapter

adm8211 based card.

So if you feel like being generous, private message me or drop an email to latexer@gentoo.org

-pete "trying not to sound like a beggar" johanson

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## cuban

You know what, I think I might have a couple of spare linksys PCI card and maybe a spare cisco PCMCIA card. Let me check the stash next week, I'll let you know.

OT (Sort of):

As far as MiniPCI goes, which do you think I will have better luck with? The Cisco or the Intel Centrino?

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## latexer

 *cuban wrote:*   

> You know what, I think I might have a couple of spare linksys PCI card and maybe a spare cisco PCMCIA card. Let me check the stash next week, I'll let you know.
> 
> OT (Sort of):
> 
> As far as MiniPCI goes, which do you think I will have better luck with? The Cisco or the Intel Centrino?

 

I've actually got a cisco PCMCIA, but i've leant it to a friend that needed a card. So that's actually on my list of covered things.

If any of the linksys's something funky other than prism2, one of those might be helpful.

As for minipci, if you go centrino, you'll have to use the $$ Linuxant, or the ndiswrapper around the windows driver. Apparently ndiswrapper is nice, i'm about to try out this centrino i stole from a friend so i can start testing that.

The cisco minipci has a driver being worked on by fabrice bellet and a bit hacked on by me. His patch to airo.c just made it into 2.6.3-rc1, so that's finally getting pretty mature. 

Only problem with the cisco's is firmware stuff (windows tries to upgrade to a new one that linux doesn't jive with)

Both have their mild to huge annoyances.

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## cuban

Well, I really hate the thought of using Windows drivers in linux. I'd hate to give the vendors the idea that they can just get away with making a Windows driver and the Linux community will just "figure it out"; or worse for the vendors to know they don't HAVE to make a Linux driver because a Windows wrapper can be used. 

So that rules that out. I guess I'll shell out $109 for a Cisco minipci.

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## sim0nx

i got an atheros pcmcia card

i can't lend/give it to you (cos it's my main and only wifi card  :Smile: ), but i may test things for you, if you like ?

it's a netgear WG511T

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## cuban

Well it turns out this linksys card is fried. So no go. I have a Compaq Wireless PC Card. Not sure what chipset it is (haven't put it in the laptop).

Any luck with the Centrino or should I just go and get the aironet?

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## steel300

I've got an Atheros based Proxim ORiNOCO Gold that isn't in use. If you want it, just let me know and I'll box it up and ship it out.

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## latexer

 *cuban wrote:*   

> Well it turns out this linksys card is fried. So no go. I have a Compaq Wireless PC Card. Not sure what chipset it is (haven't put it in the laptop).
> 
> Any luck with the Centrino or should I just go and get the aironet?

 

From here it looks like most of the compaq cards are either orinoco or prism2, so that'd be a little wasteful to bother sending.

As for centrino, i've not heard back from the email i sent them over a week ago, i'm gonna send another one soon.

I've got an ndiswrapper ebuild mostly ready using my new kernel-mod.eclass i've been working on on bug #32737 on bugs.gentoo.org

Hopefully that'll be in soon to test. Annoying to use the windows driver, but seems like currently the "best" option.

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## cuban

This compaq card is orinoco. 

I got my centrino working with ndiswrapper (had no choice). I can't get kismet working though...

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## Kovid

I have a spare Linksys WPC11 v4 card that is based on the RTL8180 chipset. This chipset only has a driver which is an open source wrapper based on a closed source core. I don't use it anymore because I cant modify the closed source part to work on a 2.6 kernel...I could send it to you, if it might prove useful.

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## feliks

I might probably be able do dig an ACX-100 PCI card for you (a D-Link DWL-520+ from what i remember). Are you interested in that chipset at all? I was at a time, but, sadly, gave up...

Also -- whereabouts are you? I could only possibly lend you that card so I'd need to know that.

[a]

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## latexer

hey all,

I've now got an atheros pcmcia, and two (dunno how this happened) rtl8180 based pcmcia cards to test on! Thanks again to those who sent me stuff. 

So the 8180 won't prolly be needed. As for the acx100 card, i don't have one of those, but i'm all the way over here in the US in New York City, so no sense really to send things overseas if there isn't a need.

thanks again all! only other major chipsets i seem to be missing now are the acx100 stuff, the atmel, and the adm8211 that's floating around. I'm sure there's others, but those are the ones i hear most about.

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## Kovid

Do let me know if you ever get decent support for the rt8180 on a 2.6 kernel. I spent a little while on it myself, but didn't get anywhere. Thanks.

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## latexer

 *Kovid wrote:*   

> Do let me know if you ever get decent support for the rt8180 on a 2.6 kernel. I spent a little while on it myself, but didn't get anywhere. Thanks.

 

I started hacking on that a little bit last night. I got things building fine, after a little hacking on their timer_t stuff. Problem seems to be the priv_part.o which looks for the __generic_copy_{to,from}_user symbols. I may put together the full build infrastructure and patches to the few files so that it would build given a *working* 2.6 priv_part.o, then start emailing realtek about getting them to build a version of the compiled part against 2.6 so we can get this working for people.

Other than that, i may try to right a little bit of compatibility layer for just those tidbits the 2.4 priv_part.o needs, but i'm not too hopeful about that... (:

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## Kovid

Yeah, thats kinda where I stopped too. A compatability layer didn't occur to me though.

I did read somewhere on the net that people were working with Realtekk too get them to release a data sheet...but havent heard anything on that for a while.

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## BakaHitokiri

ive got an ACX100 based card, from topcom, but theres already a perfectly good open source driver (http://acx100.sourceforge.net/), so i dont know if ud need it?

id give u my rtl8180 but its built in  :Sad: 

ive been trying to get it to run but it just wont work. from what ive found theres already a project working on it but it seems pretty dead (http://sourceforge.net/projects/rtl-ddp). I've been forced to download and install rh9, which has a working module (cant b used in other distros though) for now since i dont want to use the ndis wrapper, it makes me feel  bad using windows drivers.

Id be glad to test some stuff for u on it, that way i can feel usefull to the community  :Wink: . just let me know.

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## orvtech

 *latexer wrote:*   

> So here's the deal. No one else on the gentoo team is interested in focusing on the whole wireless thing. Which leaves me with *lots* of drivers that i'd love to keep maintained and add to portage. BUT, i currently have a somewhat limited hardware set, and therefore am sometimes at a loss to test some of the drivers.
> 
> However, i *really* don't like mooching off of people. It makes me feel all icky and gross on the inside. So if people have any spare wifi cards they don't need, it'd be great if you could lend or give (i prefer lend, i'll feel bad just accepting hardware) them up for a bit so i can test new drivers or keep current drivers in portage up to date. 
> 
> Here's the hardware i *DO* have already:
> ...

 

i know this is out of the theme, but ive been searching the forums and i've found that there are some threads abut the "Engenius" nic card unsolved, most of them are refering on how to set them up, i notice that you have been experimenting with it, would you care to post a mini howto??? this will help us out a lot  :Wink: 

thanks in advance.

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## orvtech

so.... anyone?? a little hint??? howto configure this NIC ???

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## tuxdaemon

I'm getting my Thinkpad T30 today, which comes with an integrated Cisco Mini-PCI 350 Aironet.  I've only heard good things about it.

I figured out wireless networking on Linux quickly.

Install wireless-tools

iwconfig device (eth1) essid netname

dhcpcd eth1

pretty much...

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## orvtech

 *tuxdaemon wrote:*   

> I'm getting my Thinkpad T30 today, which comes with an integrated Cisco Mini-PCI 350 Aironet.  I've only heard good things about it.
> 
> I figured out wireless networking on Linux quickly.
> 
> Install wireless-tools
> ...

 

yes i have my Asus M6N with Wifi, but with ipw2100, i want to use my Senao PCMCIA card for other things, the thing is that i dont know what driver uses, for what i have read it works with Prism drivers but all the prism drivers that i have seen are for 54Mps cards, my card is a 802.11b (11Mbs).

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## tuxdaemon

Prsim54 has like 6 supported cards on the list.  If you want 54mbit wifi, pick one and hunt.

I recommend the revision a dlink shown on the site, but have yet to find any ebay item with the correct revision.  This is mostly due to people's ignorance with hardware, so they tend to not list things like this where Windows users don't need it.

Orinoco Gold 802.11B is the best 802.11b around.  Tons on ebay with drivers included, 2.6 supports most of these too, and antennas on a bunch of them.  A bit expensive imho, but for wardriving and extended range, a good card.

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