[Dapper Dan]

I've been trying for almost a week to get my Netgear MA311 wireless pci card to configure and become operational but NOTHING works! I bought this card because wvlan-linux said it used prism2 so I thought it wouldn't be that much trouble. I've tried it under Mdk 10 with the 2.6 and 2.4 kernel, I've tried it under Mdk 9, Fedora Core1, Morphix Gnome, Kanotix, Knoppix STD, Damn small, and nothing makes this card work! I go:

modprobe orinoco_pci

which returns no errors

then:

iwconfig eth0 mode ad-hoc nick "" essid "dapper" channel 6
ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.105
ifconfig eth0 up

The light on the card stops flashing at this point but iI cannot connect.
I've tried it on eth1 and eth0, and neither works.

This is very frustrating in that I've read on line where others report this card working, but when I try the methods they say, it still will not work!
Hell, I even installed Windows 98 to see if I could get it working with it! Although I didn't know how to make it connect to the internet, the Netgear setup utility DID see my Linksys Wireless G router so there shouldn't be anything wrong with the card itself.

The Linksys wireless G works well with the Orinoco gold card in my wife's Toshiba laptop right out of the box as it is backwards compatible with 802.11b.

I'm out of ideas here and am grasping at straws. ANYTHING that anyone might be able to contribute that may help me figure this out, please let me know!!

Thanks

Dapper Dan

[danleff]

I share your frustration. I have a D-Link that will not work as well. Of course it is pcmcia. It is supposed to use the madwifi driver. Well, try to find the correct version!

If I find anything I will let you know.Then we can share a toast!

I assume that you saw the following;

http://members.iinet.net.au/~mtriggs/wireless.html

Also, do you have WEP or WPA?

[Dapper Dan]

Yes, thanks danleff. I used that post to configure, but it's not working for me! We use WEP, but I disable it when trying to get the card working. I should have just sprang for the Orinoco Gold PCMCIA PCI card and I would have been done with it! I may still yet. It drives me crazy that all these posts on line, you read about folks getting this card working in a matter of minutes, yet I can't get it to work no matter how hard I try! ;(

Good luck with yours. Which distro are you trying to get it working under?

[Dapper Dan]

Yes, thanks danleff. I used that post to configure, but it's not working for me! We use WEP, but I disable it when trying to get the card working. I should have just sprang for the Orinoco Gold PCMCIA PCI card and I would have been done with it! I may still yet. It drives me crazy that all these posts on line, you read about folks getting this card working in a matter of minutes, yet I can't get it to work no matter how hard I try! ;(

Good luck with yours. Which distro are you trying to get it working under?

[danleff]

I'm currently running Lindows Laptop Edition. Works great, except for the wireless. I may yet try Mandrake or Fedora, but perhaps see if Mepis can pick it up first.

[Dapper Dan]

Danleff, here's a script and some info which might help with your card to with Mepis. The script doesn't work well with Fedora, it appears to be written for Debian based distros. I'm going to Hard Drive install Kanotix, (also Debian-Knoppix) and see if I can get anywhere with it. I finally had to give up trying to install the Netgear Ma311 on Fedora core1, it was turning into a nightmare..

[danleff]

Good find! Thanks! I'll give it a go.

BTW, what happened to the e-mail notification on threads responded to? I am having a heck of a time keeping track of things. Did I miss something when the forum was upgraded?

[Dapper Dan]

I've given the better part of over a week trying to get this #@#$^%& card to work under ANY Linux distro, and no matter what, it simply won't work!!! How is it that I read about so many users on line getting this card to work, yet I've spent countless hours toiling away into the wee hours of every morning for over a week, only to never get this card connected!! God! It makes you just want to give up and go back to Windows!! My most recent attempt was to get it working under Mdk 9. There was no orinoco_pci driver in 9, so I dusted off my old 9.1 cds and installed them. I go into the Mdk Control Center/Network Configuration and it finds and installs orinico_pci, then congratulates me on a job well done! The light is shining steadily without blinking on the back of the card, there are no errors from:

modprobe orinoco_pci

No errors anywhere! In fact, it says the card is up and running but it also says it is not connected!!

I've run across some major ball busters with Linux, but this one has just about made me want to put a .45 slug in my brain!

I've tried to get this card working under, (count 'em) 5 distros without success! Yet Linux-Wlan says it is compatible, and then there are those infuriating posts where users purport to have this card up and running in a matter of minutes without much configuration!

I'm no Linux guru, but I've been at the console for over two years now, and have always been able to figure out how to make things work. No matter what I try, this one just will not work, and I think I've tried every thing on line that can be found to try!!

God, this is just damned ridiculous!!

[danleff]

Believe it or not..the same here. Knoppix 3.4 found my D-Link card as ath0, using the ath-hal driver, but no connect! Steady light on the card...no connect. We must be missing something simple!

[Dapper Dan]

What router are you using? I'm using a Linksys Wireless "G" which is backward compatible to 802.11b. Is it possible that this card, for whatever reason, doesn't like this router? It doesn't seem likely since our Orinoco Gold card, which is also 802.11b only, works perfectly with it.

While I was doing research on the Gold card and the Linksys router, I did run across a post of a guy saying his notebook card, which was "b" only wouldn't connect with a Linksys wireless g router when others cards would. His post went unanswered. I'm gonna see if I can track that post down again.

I can work Fedora and Mandrake 9 into having every indication that the card is functional, but it won't let me connect to the internet, ping other boxes or ssh.

Mind numbingly frustrating.. ;(

[danleff]

D-link wireless cards. D-Link router. Al are the "G" variant.

I have a card in a desktop (my wife's) and one in the laptop. Of course these females won't let you put Linux on their systems...but it is Mother's Day!

According to D-Link, they state that their "b" series are backwards compatible, but will slow the system down to the "b" standard.

I'm going to try some stuff with Knoppix this evening in the desktop and laptop.

[Dapper Dan]

For the first time in a long time with Linux, I'm just gonna give up. I have spent countless hours with many distros, and all to no avail.

In Mandrake 9.1, lspci returns that it is indeed a Harris wavelan Prism2 chipset. The configurator loads it with orinoco_pci, which is built into the kernel. modprobe orinoco_pci returns no errors. My router's WEP encryption is turned off. The light on the card goes from blinking to a steady amber when I do:

ifconfig eth0 up

The Orinoco gold card in the wife's Toshiba laptop runs perfectly recieving from the same router as it always has. Every indication that Mdk 9.1 gives, is that the card is using the orinoco_pci driver, (which almost everything I've found on line says is the best driver to use with the Prism2 chipset), and it just won't work.

This is also frustrating in that I didn't even have to crack a terminal with the Orinoco, it conversely worked perfectly right out of the box. I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place and go with the gold card since I know it works.

I hate it when I am utterly defeated by something like this with Linux, but after a week of frustration I'm just gonna cut my losses and be done with it.

[danleff]

Well, Dan, the same here. Tried Knoppix 2004-5-10. Picked up the card, but did not give me an indication in ifconfig that the net was up. For me it was the ath-hal driver. Got as far as;

#ifconfig ath0 up

#iwlist ath0 scan (gave all the correct router settings)

Checked all the settings for essid...;

#iwconfig ath0 essid "Value"

No WEP on the router. Open connection, not shared key.

#ifconfig showed a connection, the lights were blinking as they should - no Konqueror connection to the web.

I'm going to work on this some more.

[Dapper Dan]

Deo Vindice!!

I decided to try one last thing and I got it up and running! I just couldn't understand how every distro I tried the Netgear MA311 with all indicated that the card was functional, yet no connection. As a last resort, I asked a friend if I could borrow his D-Link 802.11b DI-614+ wireless router to check out my theory. I disconnected my Linksys Wireless G and hooked up the D-Link and now the NetGear cards are working!

For whatever reason I don't understand, The Linksys Wireless G likes talking to the Orinoco Gold Card, but doesn't like talking to the MA311s. Weird huh?? That post I found must have been on to something.

I feel so vidicated! It was the router not the Netgear cards!

The bad news is, I now have to make a choice of buying an 802.11b only router which I know will work, or trying an Orinoco Gold Card, (which will work with the Wireless G) with a PCMCIA to PCI Adapter which may or may not work. I'm tempted to try the Gold Card with the adapter since my Linksys router's speed absolutely flies in comparrison to this D-Link.

danleff, it could be a similar problem you are having. Try a different router and see what happens! If I can assist in some way, please let me know!

[danleff]

Thanks, DapperDan. One would think that my system should be compatible, since they are the same type, brand and rating.

No problem in Windows. The issue sure seems to be a driver issue and support for WEP. I'll let you know how it goes.

[danleff]

Finally DapperDan! 8)

Got my wireless D-Link DWL-g650 running under Linspire on my laptop, using the Linuxant package with Windows XP drivers. Linspire has a nice GUI for network configuration that allowed me to play around with the settings. WEP and all!

The Linspire forums had a nice how-to on getting it to work.

I am going to try Knoppix next and see if the Linuxant package will work there, as well.

The Linuxant package is free trial for only 30 days, but for $19.99 it's good for me! Saves the headaches!

I will try open source next(ndswrapper) or madwifi.

You do need to have a compatible card for the Linuxant package, which the D-Link atheros chipset is, on this card.

[Dapper Dan]

That's great news! Congratulations! I never had any luck with those Linuxant drivers with Conexant Winmodems. I'm glad it's easier with the wireless cards! Whoda thunk it!

I just built a "new" experimental box from scratch out of old junk boxes I have. It's got an Asus motherboard, 6 gig drive, 128 ram and a Pentium II 650. Fedora Core 2 installed! I had trouble with it finding the NetGear card, it just wouldn't see it! I changed pci ports and it still wouldn't see it! Finally out of desperation, I found a lower slot that had never been used, knocked out the blank and installed it there, and it finally found it! Two bad pci ports in a row! Whoda thunk that either!

Fedora installed the Prism 2 drivers for it, but I switched to the orinoco_pci, and she's working like a charm, 2.6 kernel and all!

This is the third time I've been able to piece together a fairly decent Linux box from junk computers I've collected from the Salvation Army store and various other places. What a money saver!

Linux really breaths new life into these older boxes!

[rsteven]

Hi Dan,

I am new to Linux and I have just installed Fedora Core 2 (downloaded 3 days ago)on my PC. I have a Netgear WG311 card which does not seem to be recognised? ie The install has not picked it up and allocated a name to it.

Do I have to do something to get it recognised? Is there some kind of hw scan?

Also it seems that you recommend the orinco_pci driver. How do I get this and is there an automated way to install it? Or can i just use something in Fedora Core?

Thanks in advance :-)

[Dapper Dan]

Hi rsteven and welcome!

I know this card will work because I also have it running with with Fedora Core 2. Have you played around with the Fedora network configurator? As root go:

system-config-network [enter]

Go in there and click on the hardware tab and check how the card has been set up. post back here what it says. It's probably just a matter of how it is set up there.

By the way, what router are you using? Make sure WEP is disabled while trying to configure it.

[rsteven]

Thanks Dan,

I have a DLINK router/modem (i dont have the model to hand). I will try what you suggested thanks :-)

Also I may have bought a PCI Card and router that are not WEP compatible as one wants to use either 32/64/128 bit encryption and the other wants to use 10/40bit or figures along those lines. Its a bit of a pain and I am not that up on networking! perhaps there is another way that i can ensure security?

Cheers,

Richard.