PCMCIA Wireless

[SystemicError]

Hi all,

I'm running Debian Sarge i386-2.4.27 on a dell inspiron 1150. I installed pcmcia-cs and, since the kernel is '2.4 or higher,' already have the pcmcia modules in my kernel. cardmgr runs whenever I boot up my machine.

I have two pcmcia cards that I am interested in using. The first is a Western Digital FireWire Cardbus PC Card model no. WDADOO3-RNW. The second is an SMC 2635W wireless cardbus adapter, an Orinoco card, according to the pcmcia_cs documentation.

When I first ran "cardctl insert," I received a voltage interrogation failure. "cardctl status" showed that the socket (I only have one) was empty. That was yesterday.

Today I booted my machine and attempted the process again. "cardctl status" returns the following when my SMC card is already inserted:

Socket 0:
3.3V Cardbus card
function 0: [ready]

It continues to elude me why the situation changed; I suspect it has to do with having the card inserted at boot time. I don't know if this is important, but the output of cardctl status is identical for either card.

In any case, I intend to start using these cards at some point, especially the wireless. I just don't know how to go about it beyond what I've done so far. Now that the pcmcia is registered (?) do I ifup [some interface]? Which interface? Help?

Thanks in advance,
SystemicError.

[psic]

Check out Ndiswrapper, http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ , they also have good instructions on setting up wireless on their wiki. You can (I think) install ndiswrapper through apt-get.

[SystemicError]

I've heard of ndiswrapper, but I'm not keen on using a windows driver. I hear it isn't very reliable. Is there any truth to that? Also, what other ways of using my card are there?

[psic]

Well, I don't know about other ways to use your card, but Ndiswrapper has been working fine for me for the past few months, since I've had this laptop. It is not very hard to setup.

[SystemicError]

I have kernel version 2.4.17-2-386.

When I apt-cache search ndiswrapper, this kernel does not appear. I can follow the wiki for ndiswrapper; I downloaded the correct driver and can even get ndiswrapper (using ndiswrapper-modules-2.6.8-2-386) to register the card's driver and hardware, but when I modprobe ndiswrapper, nothing shows up (which is because I have the 2.6.8 version instead of the 2.4.17 to match my kernel, right?).

Therefore, I'd be very thankful if I knew how to either upgrade my kernel or find the appropriate version of ndiswrapper.

Thanks again,
SystemicError

[psic]

I'm not sure since I had ndiswrapper already installed in kanotix, but you could compile it yourself (you would need the kernel headers for your kernel, which you can get with apt-get).

[SystemicError]

Forgive me, but I have no idea how to go about that. Apt-get kernel-headers-2.6-2-386?

Then what? I've never compiled a kernel or updated one, and, supposing I did, many of my programs/utilites are tied to the current kernel (for example, pcmcia-modules-2.4.27-2-386). I don't see a higher version of the module; what will happen if I update the kernel?