wireless on Amilo xa1526

[billyrobson]

I am a newbie to linux and have installed Debian on an Amilo xa 1526 an am having trouble getting the wireless to work.

I have tried ndsiwrapper with the vista drivers, also tried fsam7400 to switch the wireless on.

I am at a total loss now. Is it possible for wireless to work on this laptop. Can someone please give me some pointers as to how to proceed.

[valemon]

Post the output of lspci in order to see your chipset. Also try using xp drivers not vista.

[billyrobson]

lspci gives the following.

00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a3)
00:0a.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PMU (rev a3)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 IDE (rev f1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev f1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:14.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce Go 7600] (rev a1)
07:06.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev c0)

I am now going to try xp drivers

[ruien]

You dont say if you are running 64 bit or not. Ndiswrapper works only with 32 bit xp drivers for your wireless on xa1526. Run apt-get install wirelesstools, ndiswrapper, wpa_supplicant.

As root run ndiswrapper -i sisxxx.inf , check if its installed with command ndiswrapper -l,it should say driver installed, hardware present, then run ndiswrapper -m for adding ndiswrapper to modprobe.conf.
It should add a line saying: alias wlan0 ndiswrapper to modprobe.conf.

run depmod -a and then modprobe ndiswrapper and check that the driver is loaded by typing dmesg in terminal. You should get some info about your card there and what type off security it support etc...

If not then try it again. Remove drivers installed with ndiswrapper -r sisxxx

You should consider opensuse as your distro on that laptop because yast will help you manage your network(wired or wireless) in a more easy way

[billyrobson]

I am running with 64 bits. I did find a 64 bit driver for my hardware and it does work. However, my PC crashes quite regularly with the wireless enabled. I take it that this is the windows drivers. You sya to run 32bit XP drivers. Can I use 32bit drivers whilst running 64 bit linux?

[ruien]

I am running with 64 bits. I did find a 64 bit driver for my hardware and it does work. However, my PC crashes quite regularly with the wireless enabled. I take it that this is the windows drivers. You sya to run 32bit XP drivers. Can I use 32bit drivers whilst running 64 bit linux?

No you need to have 64 or 32 bit drivers according to system. Thats weird. I tried 64 bit drivers from Fujitsu's support site and those drivers didn't work for me. Wireless just hanged and didnt connect properly. Did you find 64 bit drivers on another site? It doesnt matter to me because i wont go for 64 bit system anyway Didnt see any differense in speed at all.

32bit drivers works and are stable regardless WEP, WPA, WPA2 etc. Running Fedora atm with ndiswrapper and 32 bit drivers now and have no trouble at all.

[valemon]

From the begging it wasn't a really good idea using a 64 bit system. Try installing a 32 bit version. Take a look at this thread.

[billyrobson]

I got the driver sis163u from here Jensen Air:Link 7554 LongRange Driver File List

but alas my wireless router has gone on the blink, I can pick up next doors signal but not my own.

[ruien]

Can you pick up signal or connect? Why don't you try Fujitsu's 64 bit vista drivers? As far as i know there aint a pure 64 bit driver made for this card. Only a ugly Windows Vista hack for 64 bit but that was a while back tho. I would strongly recommend switching to 32 bit system and try it again with drivers downloaded from fujitsu siemens or as i use: drivers from fujitsu's install cd. Those drivers work for sure. I'm online now using those drivers

I f you try opensuse then follow this howto : NDISWRAPPER Setup Information (SuSE 10.x, 32-bit)
If you try Fedora then follow this howto: FedoraForum.org - How to ndiswrapper in Fedora

Do not install ndiswrapper via suse repo's. Its buggy and wont work proberly. Do not use networkmanager either. That software is unstable. Use yast to manage your network using ifplugd. If you stay with debian then go for 32 bit version. You will have to many problems with 64 bit. Not only with network but also with other essential software. Read post from valemon.

If you stay on debian then uninstall drivers with ndiswrapper -r sis163u and to make sure delete folder sis163u in /etc/ndiswrapper

Then install again and post the last 6 to 10 lines from dmesg (dmesg in terminal) here.

[Manwe]

Hi.
Someone, please tell me, where can I find the XP drivers for my Amilo XA 1526.. (I mean, wireless drivers) I am using 32bit version of Mandriva Linux 2007.1, but if I want to run WiFi, I must configure it (ndiswrapper) witht Windows drivers. (I am using a 32bit XP SP2,,)