riseringseeker Posted October 14, 2006 Report Share Posted October 14, 2006 I am not sure which formum to post this in, so moderator, move it if you think it fits better elsewhere. I wanted to relate my experience with installing my WPC54G Linksys pcmcia card in my HP Pavillion 4900 laptop. I have used Mandriva since 9.0, and with the laptop since 10.1. I had initial troubles getting the wireless card to work, but when 2005 came out, it installed flawlessly. 2006 also had no installation issues using ndiswrapper. When I installed 2007 on the laptop things changed. I tried to install it the same way I had in previous versions, using the wpc54gv2_driver_utility_v2.02 under ndiswrapper. It initially installed OK, and got connected to my router. However, when I clicked on drakroam, it gave this error message: *********** Some packages (acx100-firmware) are required but aren't available. These packages can be found in Mandriva Club or in Mandriva commercial releases. Info: due to missing /lib/firmware/tiacx1* The required files can also be installed from this URL: http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/Firmware *********** Since I had downloaded the 6 CDs from the club site, I was a little surprised to see this message. I would have thought a club release would have had them. OK, maybe it was an oversight on someones part to have not included it in the club CDs I downloaded. I went to the site indicated in the error message, and d/l'ed the file FwRad16.bin, and renamed it. (I had looked and seen a picture of my card saying it was "OK" to use.) I put the file in the '/lib/firmware' directory as instructed, and on the next boot got: ************ EIP:[<eeda7ee37>] acxpci_i_interrupt+0x14310x6f0 [acx_pci] SS:ESP 0068ebdf728 <o>Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt ************ (If there is an error above, write it off to my not being able to read my handwritten notes) Obviously there was a problem. I unplugged the card, rebooted, and everything came up normally. Putting the card back in and rebooting gave me the same, or similar error again. OK, remove the tiacx111c16 file from the directory, and it came up fine, and the wireless card worked again. I do not like to just ignore error messages (like the one drakroam now again gave me), so I started tinkering. I had overlooked two files named tiacx111c16 on the sourceforge website that also were available. I tried both of them and tried them, but same results. I walked away from it for a bit, and then remembered that in the wpc54 directory I had copied to the hard drive, there was also a file named FwRad16.bin. I thought, before I holler for help, let me try this. I copied it to the '/lib/firmware' directory, renaming it tiacx111c16. I crossed my fingers and rebooted. IT WORKED! I then rebooted again, forcing a fsck, and other than hanging for several minutes on hda8 57.6%, it still booted up just fine, the network came up, and clicking on drakroam no longer gave an error message. I still wonder why the CDs downloaded from the club pages didn't have that, and could have done without the hassle, but at least I got things working. [moved from Laptops by spinynorman] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riseringseeker Posted October 16, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2006 (edited) Obviously I spoke too soon. I now again (after a few reboots) get the dreaded Kernel panic because of a bad interrupt. I take the tiacx111c16 out of the /lib/firmware directory and it works, sort of. Not only do I now get the error message about the file being missing (though the wireless connection seems just fine - using it to type this) I also see a weird error message during bootup saying that the card was started in an invalid mode - it says it was called with "Roaming" as the mode (as opposed to Managed, or Ad Hoc). Looking at it with iwconfig, it shows the mode as Managed, but MCC shows it as Roaming, and if I try to change it there, the system locks. I think when 2008 comes out, I will wait a few months before even looking at it, maybe some of the various bugs in any new release will already be ironed out. spinynorman you may want to move this once more. Edited October 16, 2006 by riseringseeker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted October 16, 2006 Report Share Posted October 16, 2006 spinynorman you may want to move this once more. I'll leave it for the time being. Perhaps someone will provide a tweak so you can amend your original procedure. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riseringseeker Posted October 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 28, 2006 Well, having just sat in a hotel in Guam for 5 days with little else to do, tried the above again. For whatever reason it now works, using one of the files available from http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/Firmware. It may have been in an update, or the file on the site may have changed, I really do not know. I used the file from the site that is 83024 bytes, if that makes a difference. I wanted to run a few days with various connections before claiming victory, but was somewhat concerned about some of what I saw when I click on the recent changes link, then clicked on: http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/ACX100/...:Protected_page :o Any clues? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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