SuSE 8.1 WiFi with Net Gear WP121

[SuSE 8.1 WiFi with Net Gear WP121]

I've succesfully installed SuSE 8.1 (build 2.4.19) on a 586 platform. I know I

should be usinga more current build, but this is the one that I have.

 

I purchased a Net Gear WG121 as an inexpensive option to get around cabling

problems in this old house and am using it successfully on the Windows XP

laptop, but want to have it on the linx server instead. Since the windows

drivers from the vendor CD-ROM work correctly on the laptop, I have used them

on the SuSE system. I am a Linux newbie hesitant to compile source so have

been try to work with RPMs only. Here is what I have done:

 

After spending 2 days reading about configuration problems with this system, I

came across a message posted that suggested the

http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/ RPM would solve the issue about USB 2.0

support for Prism GT chipsets which is the chipset that

http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz identified for the WG121.

 

I used the YaST control panel for netowrks to add a new ethernet adapter and

then modified the ifcfg file to complete the channel and frequecy as follows:

 

BOOTPROTO='dhcp'

REMOTE_IPADDR=''

LABEL='wg121'

STARTMODE='hotplug'

UNIQUE=''

WIRELESS='yes'

WIRELESS_ESSID='emp48'

WIRELESS_KEY=''

WIRELESS_MODE='Managed'

WIRELESS_NICK='wg121'

WIRELESS_NWID=''

DHCLIENT_MODIFY_RESOLV_CONF='yes'

DHCLIENT_SET_DEFAULT_ROUTE='yes'

 

Note: the machine also has an internal 10/100 ethernet card which is what is allowing

this connection to work

 

I down loaded the driverloader from linuxant and installed it with YaST. Then

in /usr/sbin I executed dldrconfig and to the default responses to the script then

open browser to 127.0.0.1:18020/ to load inf files from the Vendor CD-ROM. This all

worked fine after a couple trial runs but the Driverloader indicates it cannot find

the device (reasonable as it was not plugged in) so I restarted the system to ensure

that all of the changes were saved. The boot came up with only one message:

 

mtrr: no more MTRRs available

 

My /var/lib/driverloader currently contains:

 

wg121nd5.sys

wg121nd4.inf

 

Now for the big test, I plug the WG121 into the USB port and lights come on and the

System freezes. I do not get a log file entry to tell me what might be going wrong.

 

Can anyone help give me some ideas as to where to go next? Am I making some stupid newbie mistakes?

 

Thanks

Patrick