unable to blacklist ath_pci in SLAX on eee pc

[bwh1969]

The eee pc [ASUS new sub notebook] uses an atheros card madwifi doesn't yet support so I tried to blacklist it to run ndiswrapper and thought I could do so in my saved changes, but that loaded AFTER hotplug ran so:

I created a slax module to load the blacklist with my changes {I assume before hotplug runs as it is now in the modules directory} ... and when I go to etc/hotplug/blacklist,

all the original items are there and my addition of

ath_pci
ath_hal

I did the following:

root@slax:~# pcimodules
ath_pci -->(It is still here?)
i2c-i801
i8xx_tco
hw_random
ehci-hcd
uhci-hcd
shpchp
snd-hda-intel
intelfb
intel-agp
root@slax:~# ndiswrapper -l
net5211 : driver installed
device (168C:001C) present (alternate driver: ath_pci)
root@slax:~# depmod -a
root@slax:~# modprobe ndiswrapper
FATAL: Error inserting ndiswrapper (/lib/modules/2.6.16/kernel/drivers/net/ndiswrapper.ko): Invalid argument
root@slax:~#

I even got creative and made a fine in /etc/modprobe.d called blacklist with
blacklist ath_pci
blacklist ath_hal

Nothing works.

if the fact that ath_pci shows up by doing "pcimodules" is normal even if it is blacklisted, then I guess it is ndiswrapper?

[Dapper Dan]

The eee pc [ASUS new sub notebook] uses an atheros card madwifi doesn't yet support...

eee pc uses an Atheros based card and it doesn't work with the driver they provided with it?? That's really quite extraordinary! Is it one of the new "n" cards? It blows my mind to think they would ship a product knowing the wireless didn't work after their sales brochure says you can connect easily with wireless. Are you sure it doesn't work?

EDIT: Ah I see... with Slax, not the Linux system it came with. I was gonna say...

[bwh1969]

I am thinking the version of ndiswrapper SLAX uses is outdated... I hear ubuntu users can get it going.

I also assume madwifi will catch up at some point and the whole ndiswrapper thing won't be needed.

I like slax better than the Xandros on it... and I am not going microsoft with the machine. I am not buying software ever again or at least avoid it at all cost.

[Dapper Dan]

If it's an 802.11g card, it will work. The wireless card I'm using right now is Atheros with Madwifi. Is yours a "g" or an "n?"

EDIT: It's a "g" so it should work. I've been surfing the net trying to find one of these for my wife for Christmas... It's almost impossible to find a place where they are in stock!

[bwh1969]

Trust me it does not work directly with anything other than the Xandros it comes with and Win XP. It doesn't work out of the box like most other atheros chips do wtih most linux distros, and I can't seem to get a blacklist to work so I can use ndiswrapper either, but I have only tried with SLAX and DSL, which are both live distros. I read that something like ubuntu will work fine.

EDIT: link on madwifi suggests ndiswrapper, but only works with ndiswrapper 1.45 and above so if your linux distro has this or a higher version, it should work. SLAX 5.1.8 only offers 1.34 so that is why I can't get it to work there.

#1620 (Atheros AR5BXB63) - madwifi.org - Trac
and
Compatibility/Atheros - madwifi.org - Trac

and scroll down to AR5007

However, I will say that it is an awesome little machine. Try newegg.com. That is where I got mine and for $350.

The Xandros is fine except there is no CD/DVD burning package avialable even if I put in a few extra repos... or it will break the OS. It will play a DVD if you have a USB drive. It did a marvelous job of opening Amarok and laoding my iPod and it does play the funky m4a Apple codec. I keep hearing it is proprietary, but I don't think it truly is and as ubiquitous as the iPod is, I do applaud them for making that particular thing just work.

I can boot into SLAX via usb and if I need to burn CD/DVDs. I also got an 8MB SD card [ordered] and plan on just leaving it in as an extra drive or maybe I'll install kubuntu on it.

4MB on the machine is a bit of a joke, because half of it is a hidden partition, for recovery purposes. Good idea. I think they sell it as an 8 MB too... get that one.

[Dapper Dan]

Ha!! I just ordered the white "surf" model, which doesn't have the webcam and only 4gig. The one up with webcam and 8 gig was out of stock as it is just about every place I looked on the net. I doubt we'd use the webcam much anyway, but as a Linux user, I'm so interested in seeing a webcam work with our favoured os. It'll be here in three days just in time for Christmas!

[bwh1969]

That is the one I have. I think the camera is pretty low res anyway I really don't seem to mind as the thing is so flexible. It has as many usb ports as my full sized acer laptop... which incidentally, I pulled the broadcom card in favor of an atheros way back when I became a linux junkie I'll never put XP on my eee pc. Well, I have a copy and if I could install it to an SD card, I might consider it.