Wireless Card Linksys -b pcmia

[carlostheassin]

ok, Laptop Dell Latitude CP only has a working floppy drive, and an internal hardrive. im trying to do a live internet install with floppys by loading the root

i get fairly far, but then i can find a driver for my wireless card.
its a linksys notebook B card WPC11 ver4
ive seen sum other threads about this but i didnt totally understand it
im not new to computers but im a lil fresh to linux
where can i get a driver that debian will let me upload from a floppy so i can load that and then continue my live install.
appreciate the help
~carlos

[TheBigPhish]

i do not believe that this driver is supported by a native linux driver per se, so you will need to use a often used module wrapper (which allows the linux architecture to use a windows binary driver) called "ndiswrapper" and your card's windows driver file.

good luck with doing it from a live install cd - i am currently trying to find out if i can make ndiswrapper work with the net install CD .iso and a floppy with a windows driver...i am bound and determined to make the net install .iso work with ndiswrapper.

best bet for someone in your situation? Get a wired ethernet PC-card for like 10 bucks, plug it in...set up a wireline to your wireless router (almost every wireless router in the last 5 years has a couple of ethernet ports on the back) do the install over the wireline (it will be faster, TRUST ME) get all your updates done via apt-get...and once you are up and running, d/c the wireline ethernet, pull the PC-card and then install your wireless card...once you have a fully operative system, you can then trial & error ndiswrapper until your card works.

This is the path of least resistance for an install on your system...as i see it. I have done it twice, and it works...then go check out the ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net site and look at the faq's....it's not all that hard to get running!

[carlostheassin]

i do not believe that this driver is supported by a native linux driver per se, so you will need to use a often used module wrapper (which allows the linux architecture to use a windows binary driver) called "ndiswrapper" and your card's windows driver file.

good luck with doing it from a live install cd - i am currently trying to find out if i can make ndiswrapper work with the net install CD .iso and a floppy with a windows driver...i am bound and determined to make the net install .iso work with ndiswrapper.

best bet for someone in your situation? Get a wired ethernet PC-card for like 10 bucks, plug it in...set up a wireline to your wireless router (almost every wireless router in the last 5 years has a couple of ethernet ports on the back) do the install over the wireline (it will be faster, TRUST ME) get all your updates done via apt-get...and once you are up and running, d/c the wireline ethernet, pull the PC-card and then install your wireless card...once you have a fully operative system, you can then trial & error ndiswrapper until your card works.

This is the path of least resistance for an install on your system...as i see it. I have done it twice, and it works...then go check out the ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net site and look at the faq's....it's not all that hard to get running!

ok the problem is that im using a floppy, if i had a working cdrom drive id just throw mepis on it

[allaunjsilverfox]

I'm trying to get debian into about 690 megs of hard drive space on a laptop, it has no way to get into bios, has no cd drive, No on board ethernet.... You get the picture. I only have a wireless pcmcia card and I'm not up to paying money for a pcmcia ethernet adapter that may or may not work. Solution? 2.5 to 3.5 inch converter. Plug the drive into my desktop, install OS of choice, (debian of course) And weeeeeee. Deal with the obvious driver conflicts/Kernel panics that will no doubt arise from this. But at least you got it installed onto the drive. By the way, You can get one for about 2 or 3 dollars on ebay. Look for it, its not too hard. If you need help, contact me. And now, Randomness!