# Getting my NetGear MA401RA WLAN PCMICA card to work...

## Pyke

This is just to tell how I got my WLAN PCMCIA card to work with my ASUS L8400 laptop. Maybe others can benefit from my experiences.

I started out following all the guidelines in the forums. Almost all of them said "Don't compile PCMCIA support into the kernel. Use the drivers supplied with pcmcia-cs instead". I tried every possible combination of settings in the kernel to get this to work. No luck   :Mad: 

After very much reading and more than 10 recompiles of the kernel I tried to do the exact opposite - compile PCMCIA support into the kernel. So I compiled everything in as modules - all the drivers etc. And then it worked like a bliss   :Smile:   After emerging cardmgr and rebooting, cardmgr recognised my card and loaded the right drivers (yenta_socket for the bridge, orinoco for the card). 

Just to inform others that you shouldn't necessarily not compile the kernel without PCMCIA and cardbus support.

/Pyke

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## soulwarrior

just a short question   :Wink: 

Which package must one emerge, to get just the cardmgr utility without the drivers?

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## Pyke

Hi soulwarrior

If you have PCMCIA support and drivers compiled into the kernel then just emerge pcmcia-cs to get the cardmgr utilities. 

Also, I had to include pcmcia_core before yenta_socket in my /etc/modules.autoload to get it to work - otherwise yenta_socket would not load.

/Pyke

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## soulwarrior

Hello Pike,

Thank you, this did point me in the right direction:

 *Pyke wrote:*   

> Hi soulwarrior
> 
> If you have PCMCIA support and drivers compiled into the kernel then just emerge pcmcia-cs to get the cardmgr utilities. 
> 
> Also, I had to include pcmcia_core before yenta_socket in my /etc/modules.autoload to get it to work - otherwise yenta_socket would not load.
> ...

 

I only had to add yenta_socket to modules.autoload.

But there was another problem, when I started /etc/init.d/pcmcia, dmesg posted something like:

 *Quote:*   

> RequestIRQ: Ressource in use

 

I had to make sure I enabled ISA bus support in the kernel, then it did work   :Very Happy:  .

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