adrianjohnson Posted March 23, 2005 Report Share Posted March 23, 2005 Hello. I've installed Mandrake 10.1 Official (from Linux Magazine) and would like to create a wireless network. My current setup is: The main PC (which I'm using now) is dual-boot between Win XP and Mandrake 10.1 Second PC is Win XP only, though may install Mandrake 10.1 on there too! Wired network, and connect to internet is though main PC (ADSL modem). So, I'd like a wireless ADSL router, and either a PCI card, or USB adapter (preferably) for both PC's. Can anyone recommend products that will work with Mandrake 10.1 without much configuration? I'm new to Linux, and some threads on this board have confused me (though they're very informative). Many thanks, Adrian Johnson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ddmcse Posted March 24, 2005 Report Share Posted March 24, 2005 Hello. I've installed Mandrake 10.1 Official (from Linux Magazine) and would like to create a wireless network. My current setup is: http://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/47 ndiswrapper has worked for me using a linksys wireless b- wpc11 ver.4 and a linksys instant gigabit nic model eg1032 .. not quite the hardware you are talking about but my point ndiswrapper has made it fairly easy to install windows drivers for common, easy to find hardware Quoted from the magazine "WLAN nics with native linux support are few and far between ." " most people opt for an adapter with an Orinoco chipset " i had better luck with the linksys over the Orinoco . good article great magazine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qchem Posted March 24, 2005 Report Share Posted March 24, 2005 I've only got an orinoco card (b standard) and that works fine with the drivers in the kernel. ndiswrapper does seem to make things easy though, I think they have some kind of list of hardware known to work on their website. If memory serves, its best to avoid usb if possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrianjohnson Posted March 24, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2005 Thanks for the replies, though I'm more confused now. I'll dig out that copy of Linux Magazine if I have it. Can anyone recommend products that will work with Mandrake 10.1 without much configuration? I'm new to Linux, and some threads on this board have confused me (though they're very informative). I know Linksys was quoted but wondered what they (and the others) are like, and which is better. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted March 24, 2005 Report Share Posted March 24, 2005 If you need 802.11g, things are tricky. You need to be very lucky and find yourself an rt2400 or rt2500 based card or (second best) an atheros based card, or you'll be playing with dodgy drivers and firmware downloads. If you can live with 802.11b, things are much better; any orinoco / prism 2 based card (different ways of referring to the same thing) will work very well in MDK with no additional mucking about required. Until I upgraded my network to 11g, I used an orinoco card (Actiontec was the brand) in my laptop, and it worked fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrianjohnson Posted March 24, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2005 If you need 802.11g, things are tricky. You need to be very lucky and find yourself an rt2400 or rt2500 based card or (second best) an atheros based card, or you'll be playing with dodgy drivers and firmware downloads. If you can live with 802.11b, things are much better; any orinoco / prism 2 based card (different ways of referring to the same thing) will work very well in MDK with no additional mucking about required. Until I upgraded my network to 11g, I used an orinoco card (Actiontec was the brand) in my laptop, and it worked fine. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What are the speeds like with 11b as opposed to 11g? Also, if I get an 11g kit, would I be able to make it 11b, or would I be better off getting 11b kit? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted March 24, 2005 Report Share Posted March 24, 2005 11B is 11Mbit/sec vs 54Mbit/s for G Don't know about mandrake but my Debian install just found and configured my 802.11G cards (from lsmod) ath_pci 55076 0 wlan 102656 2 ath_pci ath_hal 128592 2 ath_pci On this one Its a WG311(rev a) 0000:01:05.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abgNIC (rev 01) Subsystem: Netgear: Unknown device 4900 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 10 Memory at e7000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2 And on the other a WG311(rev B) 0000:01:05.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abgNIC (rev 01) Subsystem: Netgear: Unknown device 4900 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 10 Memory at e7000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2 root@sixty4:/etc/network# more interfaces # /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8) auto lo eth0 ath0 iface lo inet loopback iface eth0 inet dhcp iface ath0 inet dhcp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrianjohnson Posted March 24, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2005 Don't know about mandrake but my Debian install just found and configured my 802.11G cards Sorry, but I'm really new to wireless/Linux. I know some Netgear equipment works with Mandrake, and some don't (according to the Supported hardware on the web site), so which models do you have? It'll give me a better idea of what to get! Thanks again, Adrian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havin_it Posted March 25, 2005 Report Share Posted March 25, 2005 54G cards shouldn't really be written off, if you ask me. I had no greater problems with my Belkin PCMCIA card and ndiswrapper than ... well, than anyone else has with ndiswrapper generally. It needed all the in-depth hacking to work for MDK 10.0, but actually worked out-of-the-box with 10.1 (although it did become a little more reliable when I did the full procedure). What's needed is for crappy old ndiswrapper modules to be removed from the preinstalled kernel. MDK 10.0 had v0.4, 10.1 has v0.8. Hopefully 10.2 will have version 1.0 built in, which I've found pretty bomb-proof with my card. The Belkin 54G USB card (which I've also got but never tried with MDK) is listed as usable on the ndiswrapper Wiki. The chipset is different (Prism54 I think) but a couple of reports there say it works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted March 25, 2005 Report Share Posted March 25, 2005 havin_it: yes, it does have 1.0. gowator: you got lucky and got a couple of madwifi cards :). The Linksys card is now up to rev C or D, which no longer use the atheros chipset (I should know, like a doofus I bought one), they use something utterly non-working. Finding madwifi cards is getting harder and harder, but yep, if you can find 'em, they're a good choice. We don't have madwifi in the free version because we don't think it's free (I'm surprised debian has it in the free repository, or did you add a non-free repo or something? I need to get this clarified), but if you download and build madwifi against MDK, it'll work fine and drakconnect will configure the card. Or you can buy a pack or join the club, as we have a dkms madwifi package on the commercial releases and in the Club, in which case it'll work out of the box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bdickson2000 Posted April 23, 2005 Report Share Posted April 23, 2005 Here's a recent post that should help, if you still need it (no [solved] showing): http://mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=24628 BD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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