Orinoco woe

**greenprimary** · 12-03-2003, 09:47 PM

After following this forum for a while and suffering with my own orinoco gold card and usb-gold I can only conclude that orinoco does not work with knoppix. A quick look through the old posts shows user after user asking for help with orinoco but no solutions. Orinoco cards do not work with knoppix and that's it. Maybe there's some clever extra or command that will make them work but it has not yet been posted. No matter which port or command I use (ifconfig, pump, patch-orinoco) nothing shows on eth0 or eth1. If there is someone who has actually succeeded in getting an orionoco card to work then I would like to hear what s/he did to make it work. I have tried two different orinoco gold cards on two different machines and even a different distribution of knoppix (std). If your orinoco card worked perfectly the first time then count yourself lucky. There are plenty of posts on this forum alone by people who can't get their knoppix to even see their orinoco cards, let alone surf the web or play with the other toys. Is there anyone who can either:
1) Name a wifi card that works with knoppix. Orinoco is the wrong answer.
or
2) Explain how a newbie like me can make an orinoco card work with knoppix?

I realise that many knowlegeable and gernerous people have tried to help before but the number of posts concerning orinoco woe clearly indicates that orinoco is not knoppix friendly.

Thanks in advance.

**aay** · 12-04-2003, 05:01 AM

I'm sorry but I really disagree. I am writing this post from a laptop using an Orinoco gold card. I've never had to do anything to get it to work. It's always been automagically detected. Also I read (or at least glance at) just about every post that comes in the forums and though I can recall a couple of people having problems the vast majority of people have been able to get their Orinoco cards to work fine. Saying all this obviously doesn't help you out any. So let's try and see where things have gone wrong for you. First of all if this is one of the combo cards (B/G cards) then yes you are probably going to have problems. My previous comments apply to 802.11b cards only. Second what kind of messages are you getting. Is your card listed in the output of "lspci"? Open a shell and type "lspci" do you see your card there? Moreover, open a shell and type "dmesg |more" and read through it. Are you getting any messages there? This may sound basic, but have you run "wlcardconfig"? Without giving some more info you shouldn't simply conclude that the card won't work. Lot's of people have gotten the orinoco cards to work.

**r00t 4orce** · 12-04-2003, 09:33 PM

greenprimary - orinoco B only Gold cards do work OK with Knoppix --
I happen to run a WiFi website and nearly all of my members use Knoppix/Knoppix-STD with Orinoco cards.
And part of the issue is what do people mean by "How do I get my orinoco card to Work with knoppix." To make it "just work" i.e. connect to a network or surf the net just turn on the laptop and go. To make it work with the WiFi goodies on those distros yes there are a few commands that need to be followed but nothing that is difficult at all.

P.S. Green - if you want to sell those orinoco cards please let me know.

--r00t

**greenprimary** · 12-05-2003, 09:08 PM

First of all, thanks for writing back so quickly. I have three goals here:
1) Get my own card to work, it's an Orinoco 8420-wb, gold, 80211.b
2) Get the other goodies to work. They're so close but yet so far.
3) After I figure out how to do these things then I'd like to post them in a form that even newbs like me can use, at least until orinoco and knoppix play nice together each time, every time.

I will try to get the information Aay requested for my next post. As for selling the cards

I'd like to try and make them work first. Here's what little I know.
1) I put the 8420-wd card in the slot and boot knoppix.
2) My laptop beeps me and gives a message to the effect that there is an unknown card type in the slot.
3) When I go to the wireless shell and try "sh patch-orinoco" then I get the following messages:
rmmod: module orinoco_cs is not loaded
rmmod: module orinoco is not loaded
rmmod: module hermes is not loaded

That's all I know, where do I go from here?

**greenprimary** · 12-09-2003, 07:37 PM

I ran wlanconfig an it told me that there were no lan cards ionstalled. No Weeniedos98 sees the Orinoco b card that I ma using, so I know that it's not a hardware issue. I also ran lspci and dmesg. Neither one saw my card. On a whim I checked my modules file and nothing was in it. Based on my previous post about the modules not being found, see above, I think that this is the problem. Does anyone have a possible solution?

**Gideon** · 01-23-2004, 08:48 PM

Hello everyone.
Today i decided to try installing knoppix std. (as opposed to booting from the cd and just running it).
i'm having a similar issue, my card being an orinoco aswell as its not working in knoppixstd.
---
off the cd without installing, knoppix picked up and autoconfiged my card.
after i ran the installer i nolonger have such luck as expecting the device to auto-up-and-go itself.
ive tried running service pcmcia restart, but to no avail knoppix-std didnt recognize the command. (thats what i get for taking a linux class taught with redhat) but anyhow, im curious if i am missing a command here or what exactly i should be doing.
---
the card is a orinoco/alvarion 'BreezeNET' PC-DS.11b (i believe its gold series).
any hints or suggestions would be much appreciated.
as i am not a complete linux newb, however still in primordial stages of switching to nix.

**Gideon** · 01-24-2004, 07:58 PM

Aaah my own ignorance...
after a few more hours of research i finally got it.
now my problem is getting my delorme usb earthmate to work.
seems there isnt anyone out there with this model working in linux.

**Martin Brice** · 03-22-2004, 08:09 PM

written by greenprimary
3) When I go to the wireless shell and try "sh patch-orinoco" then I get the following messages:
rmmod: module orinoco_cs is not loaded
rmmod: module orinoco is not loaded
rmmod: module hermes is not loaded

I'm having the exact same problem and I was wondering if you already found out something.

When I am booting up Knoppix-STD (or any other linux-distri) from CD I see the following lines prompted:
cardmgr[37]: Starting. version is 3.2.2
cardmgr[37]: unsupported card in socket 0

what can I do against that problem? Do I really have to downgrade the firmware like I read a few times?