PCI ilo PCMCIA NIC - WLAN Dell Latitude

Hi.

I've got a Dell Latitude (with built-in 3Com NIC), a PheeNet WLAN card (uses Realtek 8180l) and use the latest Knoppix (3.6).

I can't get the card to work - don't know if it's a driver missing or if there's anything else wrong.

Here's what I do and what results I get:


lspci|less - Ethernet controller: Realtel Seminconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8180L 802.11b MAC (rev 20) ... looks like it does recognise the WLAN card)


dmesg|less: just the 3Com NC (built-in) ... or maybe it doesn't?

Knoppix Infocenter:
PCMCIA - Card 1: CardBus hotplug device
PCI - lists 3COM NIC and Realtek RTL8180L with comment: "Capabilities: <available only to root>" ... why does it identify the WLAN NIC as PCI card???

Knoppix Network/Internet -> Wavelan configuration shows: "No wireless network card found"

I would appreciate if any answers are explicit enough for me to follow - I am all new to Linux.

Thanks!

Ulrich

All,

got some more info - when I open etc/sysconfig/netcard here's what is says:

FULLNAME="Realtec|unknown device 10ec:8180"
DRIVER="unknown"

To me, this looks like there's no driver loaded. I played a little bit with ndiswrapper, got the net8180 driver on the system but when I changed "unknown" into "net8180" and tried to save this, it wouldn't let me do it...

Any help available?

Ulrich

Hi :)
I have a TCM/medion laptop with broadcom chip wireless lan. It works perfect with ndiswrapper.
Read carefully the documentation of ndiswrapper. And visit the official site to see if the chipset of your wireless lan is supported by ndiswrapper. If not - don't try it anymore.
If it is supported - read 'man ndiswrapper'.
When you type:

ndiswrapper -l

you have to see the driver installed. If so you won't have problems configuring the net.
Also read man pages of iwconfig.
And try:

iwconfig wlan0 mode Ad-Hoc channel 11 essid 1
ifconfig wlan0 your_ip_here netmask your_netmask_here

And try running only:
iwconfig
and
ifconfig

to see the output.

iwconfig will give you information of your wireless settings - essid, MAC address, frequecy, channel and so on...


I wish you luck

Quote:

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Originally Posted by anotherulrich

All,

got some more info - when I open etc/sysconfig/netcard here's what is says:

FULLNAME="Realtec|unknown devicery 10ec:8180"
DRIVER="unknown"

To me, this looks like there's no driver loaded. I played a little bit with ndiswrapper, got the net8180 driver on the system but when I changed "unknown" into "net8180" and tried to save this, it wouldn't let me do it...

Any help available?

Ulrich

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