# NetGear WG511 "China Version" [SOLVED]

## mijenix

Hi

I have a NetGear WG511 "china version". I say specially "China version" because it doesn't work with prism54 and their firmware.

So I choose ndiswrapper. I get the wlan0 interface. I can configure the TCP/IP settings with ifconfig but I can't set the essid for this interface. I can't get it work. Everytime I type 

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> iwconfig wlan0 essid "test"
> 
> 

 

and then iwconfig wlan0 shows:

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> ESSID:off/any
> 
> 

 

Why that? Does my WLAN Card at least work with ndiswrapper? I had bought this card because I read on the prism54.org website that this card is perfectly supported. Not the "china version" but the "taiwan version"!

Please I need help. I'm at the end.

--MathiasLast edited by mijenix on Mon May 23, 2005 1:25 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## electrofreak

I need help getting this "china version" working too. Only I need it working with either the gentoo 2004.3 livecd or a knoppix CD. It doesn't seem to work with either. I have a wired card avaliable that I know works fine under linux, but... I don't have a hub in my room to hook it up. I used to have a Cisco wireless card, and I *might* be able to locate it because I know I got it to work with the knoppix CD before. It'd be hard to find though. And I wouldn't be able to use it forever so I also need to know if thie netgear WG511 will work once i have gnetoo installed on the laptop.

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## electrofreak

Alright, I've tracked down the Cisco card. I tested it and it works. I will let my dad use my netgear for a while so I can setup gentoo. But I still can't do this unless I know I can get this card to work under linux once its setup. (The netgear is wireless-G, the Cisco is only Wireless-B, thats why I'm not just going to use the Cisco)

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## mijenix

 *electrofreak wrote:*   

> Alright, I've tracked down the Cisco card. I tested it and it works. I will let my dad use my netgear for a while so I can setup gentoo. But I still can't do this unless I know I can get this card to work under linux once its setup. (The netgear is wireless-G, the Cisco is only Wireless-B, thats why I'm not just going to use the Cisco)

 

Wich Cisco card u have? Can u explain how u get the card work?

But I'm a little bit angry with my NetGear card. I bought it because on prism54.org I read that its perfectly work with linux.  :Crying or Very sad: 

I can't believe that I and electrofreak are the only ones that have this card and problem. Maybe its not a problem!

--Mathias

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## electrofreak

 *mijenix wrote:*   

>  *electrofreak wrote:*   Alright, I've tracked down the Cisco card. I tested it and it works. I will let my dad use my netgear for a while so I can setup gentoo. But I still can't do this unless I know I can get this card to work under linux once its setup. (The netgear is wireless-G, the Cisco is only Wireless-B, thats why I'm not just going to use the Cisco) 
> 
> Wich Cisco card u have? Can u explain how u get the card work?
> 
> But I'm a little bit angry with my NetGear card. I bought it because on prism54.org I read that its perfectly work with linux. 
> ...

 

Well, Its just a Cisco Wireless-B card. I believe they are fairly common. Anyway, I couldn't get it working on the gentoo livecd, but with knoppix, it works fine. Just stick it in and it works. (Unless you have to setup the encryption and such)

Since I haven't gotten a chance to actually install gentoo on my laptop, mostly since I AM TRYING TO FIND OUT IF MY NETGEAR CARD WILL WORK once it's installed! (sorry, getting impatient), I can't say that it wont work, but it definately doesn't work with the livecd or knoppix cd. 

If I can't get the wireless card to work, than I will have to stick with Windows 2000. I'd rather get the card working, but I don't want to go through all the trouble with the Cisco card, then find out I can't get my netgear to work. The netgear is Wireless-G so of course I want the faster speeds.

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## Wedge_

As I said in another thread, I have exactly the same card, and had exactly the same problems trying to get it working manually via iwconfig. I don't remember if I eventually managed to get it working like that, but it is now working perfectly with ndiswrapper and an ~x86 baselayout version with wireless support (1.11.8 ). mijenix, I know you don't want to run an ~x86 system, but you'd only need to emerge the ~x86 baselayout to try this out, and you can easily downgrade afterwards if it doesn't work. I can post the relevant bits of my kernel config and wireless setup if it'd help.

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## electrofreak

 *Wedge_ wrote:*   

> As I said in another thread, I have exactly the same card, and had exactly the same problems trying to get it working manually via iwconfig. I don't remember if I eventually managed to get it working like that, but it is now working perfectly with ndiswrapper and an ~x86 baselayout version with wireless support (1.11.8 ). mijenix, I know you don't want to run an ~x86 system, but you'd only need to emerge the ~x86 baselayout to try this out, and you can easily downgrade afterwards if it doesn't work. I can post the relevant bits of my kernel config and wireless setup if it'd help.

 

What exactly is ndiswrapper? How do I set it up to work with my card? Also, I have no problem with a ~x86 system. I love bleeding edge.

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## TheNull

 *electrofreak wrote:*   

> 
> 
> What exactly is ndiswrapper? How do I set it up to work with my card? Also, I have no problem with a ~x86 system. I love bleeding edge.

 

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=125627

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## mkw22468

it's not iwconfig wlan0 essid "test" but

iwconfig wlan0 essid test (without the quotation marks)

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## mijenix

Hi

Forget it! With ndiswrapper it doesn't work either!

--Mathias

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## Wedge_

 *electrofreak wrote:*   

>  *Wedge_ wrote:*   As I said in another thread, I have exactly the same card, and had exactly the same problems trying to get it working manually via iwconfig. I don't remember if I eventually managed to get it working like that, but it is now working perfectly with ndiswrapper and an ~x86 baselayout version with wireless support (1.11.8 ). mijenix, I know you don't want to run an ~x86 system, but you'd only need to emerge the ~x86 baselayout to try this out, and you can easily downgrade afterwards if it doesn't work. I can post the relevant bits of my kernel config and wireless setup if it'd help. 
> 
> What exactly is ndiswrapper? How do I set it up to work with my card? Also, I have no problem with a ~x86 system. I love bleeding edge.

 

ndiswrapper lets you load and use Windows network drivers in Linux. If your kernel is already configured properly (you might want to remove the prism54 driver though), then you basically just need to emerge ndiswrapper, copy the .inf and .sys from the Windows drivers to somewhere (eg /root), then run "ndiswrapper -i /root/netwg511.inf". After that, load the ndiswrapper module and you should see the green light on the card turn on. If you're running an ~x86 system, you should have a file called "/etc/conf.d/wireless.example" - copy it to /etc/conf.d/wireless, then edit it to suit your network. Do "ln -s /etc/init.d/net.lo /etc/init.d/net.wlan0", then "/etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start" and see what happens.

As I said, I can post my kernel config and /etc/conf.d/wireless if you want.

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## electrofreak

Ok...

So it is very likely I will be able to get it to work once I install Gentoo on my laptop?

Also, I'm guessing I can't get this to work on a livecd... Unless there is a livecd somewhere that has ndiswrapper.

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## Wedge_

 *electrofreak wrote:*   

> So it is very likely I will be able to get it to work once I install Gentoo on my laptop? 

 

All I can say is that it's been working flawlessly on my laptop for around 4 months now, and I'm far from the only one with it working. 

 *electrofreak wrote:*   

> Also, I'm guessing I can't get this to work on a livecd... Unless there is a livecd somewhere that has ndiswrapper.

 

You're probably right, I don't know of any LiveCDs that have ndiswrapper available. I think I did the install with a wired connection instead.

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## electrofreak

 *Wedge_ wrote:*   

>  *electrofreak wrote:*   So it is very likely I will be able to get it to work once I install Gentoo on my laptop?  
> 
> All I can say is that it's been working flawlessly on my laptop for around 4 months now, and I'm far from the only one with it working. 
> 
>  *electrofreak wrote:*   Also, I'm guessing I can't get this to work on a livecd... Unless there is a livecd somewhere that has ndiswrapper. 
> ...

 

I don't really have a wired connection avaliable. I need a hub in my room. I guess I could let it sit down in the basement with a wired connection and install it via ssh.

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## electrofreak

Ok... my laptop is now all installed, but I'm having trouble with my wireless card. I finally got it to work, then I rebooted to see if it would come back up when after rebooting, and thats when things went wrong.

First off, I got it working by the information on this site. It worked for a few minutes, until I rebooted it. After I rebooted it didn't come up. So I did an 'lsmod' and found that prism54 was interferring with it. So I did a 

```
rmmod prism54 && rmmod ndiswrapper && modprobe ndiswrapper
```

That worked, then all I had to do was run 'dhcpcd wlan0' and it worked.

So I modified a few things and rebooted again to see it it would work now. It doesn't. It just plain doesn't work anymore.

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## Wedge_

You should disable the prism54 driver in the kernel to prevent it from getting in the way. What exactly is going wrong at the moment? Is the green light on the card flashing at all? Which modules do you have loaded? I can post my kernel config and/or /etc/conf.d/wireless if that'd help.

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## electrofreak

 *Wedge_ wrote:*   

> You should disable the prism54 driver in the kernel to prevent it from getting in the way. What exactly is going wrong at the moment? Is the green light on the card flashing at all? Which modules do you have loaded? I can post my kernel config and/or /etc/conf.d/wireless if that'd help.

 

Ok, let me try that for right now and I'll get back to ya.

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## electrofreak

 *electrofreak wrote:*   

>  *Wedge_ wrote:*   You should disable the prism54 driver in the kernel to prevent it from getting in the way. What exactly is going wrong at the moment? Is the green light on the card flashing at all? Which modules do you have loaded? I can post my kernel config and/or /etc/conf.d/wireless if that'd help. 
> 
> Ok, let me try that for right now and I'll get back to ya.

 

Ok. I took the prism54 module out and added 'ndiswrapper' to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 and it seems to boot great now. It loads it and the green light goes on. but I can't seem to ping google.com or anything like that. I tried '/etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start' and it fails. Maybe dmesg can tell you whats up:

```
ndiswrapper version 0.12 loaded (preempt=yes,smp=no)

PCI: Enabling device 0000:05:00.0 (0000 -> 0002)

PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:05:00.0 to 64

ndiswrapper: using irq 10

ndiswrapper (NdisAcquireSpinLock:950): Windows driver trying to use uninitialized lock cd4dbb74, fixing it.

wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:0f:b5:22:ec:74 using driver netwg511

wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP, WPA with TKIP, WPA with AES/CCMP

ndiswrapper: driver netwg511 (NETGEAR,04/06/2004, 2.1.22.0) added

ndiswrapper (iw_set_tx_power:368): setting tx_power failed (C00000BB)

ndiswrapper (iw_set_tx_power:368): setting tx_power failed (C00000BB)

spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.

ndiswrapper (iw_set_tx_power:368): setting tx_power failed (C00000BB)

ndiswrapper (iw_set_tx_power:368): setting tx_power failed (C00000BB)

ndiswrapper (iw_set_tx_power:368): setting tx_power failed (C00000BB)

ndiswrapper (iw_set_tx_power:368): setting tx_power failed (C00000BB)

ndiswrapper (iw_set_tx_power:368): setting tx_power failed (C00000BB)

ndiswrapper (iw_set_tx_power:368): setting tx_power failed (C00000BB)

```

As I said the green light is on so maybe its just some sort of configuration problem. But there is nothing I can do to make it work.

Oh yeah, heres iwconfig's output:

```
lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any  Nickname:"any"

          Mode:Auto  Frequency:2.457 GHz  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00   

          Bit Rate=2 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm   

          RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B   

          Encryption key:off

          Power Management:off

          Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-64 dBm  Noise level:-256 dBm

          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0

          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:40   Missed beacon:0
```

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## electrofreak

Bump.

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## Wedge_

I have the same sorts of messages in my dmesg output: 

```
ndiswrapper version 1.0 loaded (preempt=no,smp=no)

ndiswrapper: driver netwg511 (NETGEAR,04/06/2004, 2.1.22.0) added

ndiswrapper: using irq 10

wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:09:5b:e9:c6:ad using driver netwg511

wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP, WPA with TKIP, WPA with AES/CCMP

ndiswrapper (iw_set_tx_power:353): setting tx_power failed (C00000BB)

ndiswrapper (iw_set_tx_power:353): setting tx_power failed (C00000BB)
```

so I don't think the tx_power stuff is critical. If the green light on the card is flashing but not staying on constantly, that means it's not connecting to your access point. Have you doublechecked all your settings, and tried disabling WEP/WPA if they're enabled? I have WEP enabled though, so it should work. This my /etc/conf.d/wireless minus comments and whitespace: 

```
essid_wlan0="adrwlan"

mode_wlan0="Managed"

channel_wlan0="11"

key_adrwlan="<wep key goes here>"

ifconfig_adrwlan=( "192.168.0.3 broadcast 192.168.0.255 netmask 255.255.255.0" )

routes_adrwlan=( "default gw 192.168.0.50" )

preferred_aps=( "adrwlan" )
```

I'm not using DHCP, which is why I've got the ifconfig settings there. Check the settings on your AP as well. I recently spent hours trying to get a PDA to connect to my AP before I remembered I had enabled it's access control list  :Smile: 

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## electrofreak

 *Wedge_ wrote:*   

> I have the same sorts of messages in my dmesg output: 
> 
> ```
> ndiswrapper version 1.0 loaded (preempt=no,smp=no)
> 
> ...

 

What version of ndiswrapper and baseloyout do you have?? Maybe theres a problem there.

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## Wedge_

baselayout-1.11.9-r1 and ndiswrapper-1.0.

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## electrofreak

 *Wedge_ wrote:*   

> baselayout-1.11.9-r1 and ndiswrapper-1.0.

 

Ah, well... I have ndiswrapper-0.12 I'm going to have to update that. I hope thats the problem.

EDIT: Just noticed I'm an Apprentice now.

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## electrofreak

 *electrofreak wrote:*   

>  *Wedge_ wrote:*   baselayout-1.11.9-r1 and ndiswrapper-1.0. 
> 
> Ah, well... I have ndiswrapper-0.12 I'm going to have to update that. I hope thats the problem.

 

Well, I upgraded it to ndiswrapper-1.0 and... nothing changed. Any more ideas??

I have a D-Link DWL-650 and can't get it working either... It seemed to work before I emerge the new baselayout and init.

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## electrofreak

Alright.... I give up. I'm going to reinstall and just use my d-link DWL-650 card. I have to reinstall because obviosly something is completely wrong with the whole wireless networking ever since I put the new baselayout on. I also read the Stage 1 on 3 and thought I might try that. Unless someone comes through for me within the next say 24 hours, it is likely I will just go ahead and do that.

Or, maybe someone can direct me as to how I can install the stable baselayout and such.

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## mijenix

Hi

Does anybody know new things about the China Version? 

Is there now a driver for this card? Or does ndiswrapper work?

I'm near to eat that sh*%&t card!  :Evil or Very Mad: 

--Mathias

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