Problem when booting Knoppix (Orinoco Silver PCMCIA)

[jsl81]

I have posted this under other catagories with no conclusion yet. I have tried googling and reading almost any forums that have anything alike with the topic and still nothing. I am somewhat new to linux.
I have been messing with this issue for awhile now. I am using Knoppix 3.4 and when I boot get a black screen which does nothing. If I use a cheat (knoppix acpi=off noscsi) it will load but only to this stage:

PCMCIA Found, starting cardmgr.

cardmgr[82] starting, version is 3.2.5
cardmgr[82] socket 0: Lucent Technologies WaveLAN/IEEE Adapter
cardmgr[82] executing: 'modprobe hermes'
cardmgr[82] executing: 'modprobe orinoco'
cardmgr[82] executing: 'modprobe orinoco_cs'

As soon as "PCMCIA Found, starting cardmgr." shows a loud beep sound is heard.
I am using a Orinoco Silver PCMCIA card. If I use the "knoppix26 acpi=off noscsi" with the card not in the machine it will load up fine, but want to be able to use my wireless card. I have had same problem with the Orinoco loadup using knoppix 3.3 but not the blank screen nor the slow loading.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Computer is Presario 2195US

[billwebb]

I'm using Knoppix 3.4 on a Toshiba 3480CT laptop with what appears to be the same card (it has a lucent label and the kernel shows the same string) and it works fine for me. I've also used it on a Dell 5100 and it worked there as well.

I've also tried a more recent Proxim orinoco silver card and it didn't work (it wasn't recognized and said so).

All I can suggest is to try your orinoco card in another laptop and see if it works there; if it doesn't you might try to find an older orinoco card (they are about $25 on ebay) and see if that works better. If your card does work in another laptop then you may be out of luck if you can't find a PCMCIA option to tweak.

Bill Webb.

[drnewbury]

hi billwebb

just a quick question. i have the same laptop as you and i was wondering how you booted or installed knoppix as i do not have a cdrom drive. for windows i have used the lan boot with pxe for my first install and then a clean install from an xp cd over a windows network the second time i needed to re-install.

just curious.
David

[billwebb]

I had a DVD writer/CD Writer that connects via the USB port.

I used that to copy the needed files off the CD and then used the loadln program from the CD to boot up Knoppix from DOS.

If you don't have a CD drive that you can plug into the USB port (or into the docking station) then you can probably do the following.

1) boot Knoppix over the network as you are doing
2) mount the DOS drive read-write
3) create a KNOPPIX directory on the DOS drive and copy the file /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX from the CD into it
4) create a /knoppix/loadln directory on the DOS drive
3) copy from the CD ROM /boot/isolinux directory the files linux24 and minirt24.gz onto the hard disk DOS drive into the above directory
4) extract loadln.exe and copy it into the above directory (do a find under knoppix to search for 'loadln', you need to gunzip it).
5) then reboot to DOS/Windows and run loadln to boot the linux24 with the specified miniroot.

I'll have to extract the exact command line but I got it from a posting on one of the forums (search for loadln.exe). If you can't find it let me know and I'll grab it from the knoppix.bat file I use.

If you create the appropriate knoppix.pif file you can then click on a knoppix icon under windows to switch to knoppix.

Bill Webb.

[drnewbury]

that sounds fantastic!!

i have just got to your post this moment, it is 3:00 in the morning so i wont be able to give it a go at the moment. fist thing tomorrow i will have a hack at it. sounds straight forward enough though.

thanks again.

[billwebb]

FYI:

Here's the command line that I used for loadln in c:\windows\knoppix.bat:

cd \knoppix\loadlin
loadlin.exe vmlinuz %1 %2 %3 root=/dev/hda1 initrd=minirt24.gz lang=en ro

Note that you probably should copy all of the KNOPPIX directory off the CD onto your hard disk. I copied the kernel file into vmlinuz to keep the command line short so I could add the %1 %2 %3 fields.

The %1 %2 %3 are in case I want to specify any debugging options.

Bill Webb.

[drnewbury]

I have finally given up and installed knoppix the standared way on an old pc.
i spent ages trying to find out y it wasnt loading with loadlin in the end i realised the hdd is formated with ntfs. i tryed to change this with partition magic but it says that there is an error in the partition table that wont allow it to work with the drive.
the standard instalation worked fine.
thanks all the same for you help.