Installing Wireless USB Adapter

[Guest MandriNoob]

Okay I am very new to Linux and installed Mandriva two days ago after a possible hard drive failure on XP...bought a new hard drive and installed Mandriva on it.

 

Anyways, I am trying to get online with it but can't get it to detect my wireless adapter which is USB. I have done a few searches online and seen where some people have had similiar problems. The device is called LAN-Express 802.11 USB 2.0 Adapter.

 

Here is the closest help I have seen online but I don't know what to make of it:

 

"Online rumor indicates that the orinoco_pci driver supports the LAN-Express cards, and a look at the driver code show a table with a PCI ID of 1260:3873 — just off by one.

 

At the suggestion of my friend Lars, I patched the driver to simply add an additional entry for 1260:3872. And that works! I've sent the patch to the driver maintainer and it's in his codebase, but you can get it here too. Once you've got a kernel with a patched driver running, just do modprobe orinoco_pci, and then configure and activate eth1."

 

I found that on another site but first off, I don't know how to edit a driver nor how to find it in linux without being able to get online. So far I have used the connection wizard it has and when it asks me to manually select a driver, no matter which one I select it brings me back to the Manually Select Driver list of drivers.

 

He also included this bit of code where he says "you can get it HERE to":

 

--- linux-2.4.20/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.c.orig 2003-05-21 11:40:59.000000000 -0400

+++ linux-2.4.20/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.c 2003-05-21 11:41:52.000000000 -0400

@@ -359,6 +359,7 @@

}

 

static struct pci_device_id orinoco_pci_pci_id_table[] __devinitdata = {

+ {0x1260, 0x3872, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID,},

{0x1260, 0x3873, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID,},

{0,},

};

 

So I think I may be on track but all I want to do is get online.

 

 

 

Okay and my second question is can I read a Hard Drive that has Windows files on it...like my mp3s, pics, videos, and some documents? I tried putting the hard drive in but never noticed it being recognized or know where to see if it is being recognized by Linux. Should I change the pins on the back of the actual hard drive to slave?

 

This is a very lengthy post and I don't want to scare anyone away but please help if you can...I really want to use Linux and learn from it.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Leo]

I can't help with the first part but in answer to the second question, you should be able to see it and read it, all you need to do is amend your /etc/fstab file to tell it where to mount the new drive (it will have an entry in /dev (probably /dev/hdb or /dev/hdc) depending on how you installed it).

 

have a look at man fstab and man mount for more detailed information or try a search of the board, it's a lot easier to search the man pages once you know what you are looking for :D .

 

Leo