[PLUG] WiFi set up pointers needed

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, Paul Heinlein wrote:

> 1. Insert the pcmcia card.

  Did this prior to booting.

> 2. Run iwconfig without any arguments. Does the new device show up?
>    Here things get tricky. The name of the device might be eth1, or
>    wlan0, or something else entirely. If you don't have iwconfig, try
>    "cat /proc/net/wireless" instead.

  Response to 'iwconfig' is that neither lo nor eth0 have any wireless
extensions. Results of 'cat /proc/net/wirelsss' is a set of headers with
nothing in the rows below.

> 3. If the device doesn't show up, tail /var/log/messages to see if
>    there are any "I'm frustrated" messages from your hotplug setup.

  No, nothing there.

>    If that isn't revealing, then you'll need to do some Googling to
>    find out what kernel module supports your card. If it's, say, the
>    very common orinoco_cs module, then do "modprobe orinoco_cs" and
>    then repeat step 2 to see if anything has happened.

  Here's where it gets interesting. According to one site, the 3CRWE154G72
card uses the Prism GT chipset (found on a Prism54 driver Web page). Details
provided include the type as 'cardbus', the subsystem ID and vendor device
both as 10b7:6001, the default PCI ID as 1260:3890 and the chipset as
'ISL3890'. The only driver I can find there is a patch for the 2.4.25
kernel; I run the 2.4.24 kernel.

  On another Web site, the ISL 3890 chip set is associated with the Prism
Duette chip set rather than the GT flavor. This site (from Rutgers U.) has
not been updated since last September. It has a driver identified only by
version number. The latest is 1.0.4.3.

  When I search the system for a prism2_cs module, one shows up for both the
2.4.20 and 2.4.22 kernels, but none for the 2.4.24 kernel.

> 4. I don't know how Slackware does network configuration, but you'll
>    almost certainly want to set up the wireless interface to use DHCP.
>    Very few people hard-wire their wireless addresses.

  That's fine by me. I assume that -- eventually -- I'll use dhcpcd to get a
dynamic, wireless IP address as I now use dhcpcd to get a dynamic address
when I plug into the ethernet port in the hotel.

> Does any of that help?

  Well, ... I have more data on the card and a more focused sense of
confusion. :-)

Thanks, Paul!

Rich

-- 
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>