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  #1  
Old June 5th, 2005, 01:04 AM
heatopher heatopher is offline
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Wireless cards

Hello, it's slightly lazy of me not to search previous threads, but I'm hoping that if I'm specific enough with my question, someone will be able to point me in the right direction.

Two or three months ago I installed Fedora Core 3 on my system, dual-booting with Windows, and all was successful. Hoorah for me, then. But then I ran into the wall. No prizes for guessing what that was. No internet, and therefore no possibility of downloading patches and everything else that I need to get going.

We use a router in the flat, and I'm quite far from the source, and anyway I don't feel like trailing a load of cables around. Didn't buy a wireless card for all that. Now, I've read that wireless cards are a problem for Linux, and it looks to me like some people have got this far and given up. If I give the full details of my wireless card is there anyone out there who can save me?

Edimax EW-7126 802.11b
(This may be a red herring, but there's a weird phenomenon for me with this card, in that it shows up in the Windows Device Manager as a "Realtek RTL8180". The reasons for such split hardware personality are beyond me, but anyhow I suppose it doesn't really matter, as the card seems to work fine under Windows. I just mentioned it in case it jogs someone's memory....)

The card came with a CD, on which are - supposedly - drivers for the whole range of Edimax wireless cards. I have not tried using this, because firstly I wouldn't have a clue how to install a driver in Linux, and secondly the two drivers supplied for this card are specifically marked as being intended one for Red Hat 7.3 and the other for Red Hat 9.0.

All of which means very little to me. Is it worth trying either of these drivers, and if so how do I do it? And then..... if that's not going to work, WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?????? If wireless cards are such a problem, who is working on them, and has anyone put together a website to coordinate the work? T'anks in anticipation,

Heatopher
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  #2  
Old June 5th, 2005, 01:31 AM
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kage kage is offline
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I've done a little searching on your card, and from what I've read the native driver support is a bit skiddish, however ndiswrapper supports it just fine. You can download the latest stable version here. Support on installation can be found at the ndiswrapper wiki.

On the list of known working cards, your card is found as follows:

Card: Alpha AFW-N411
Chipset: Realtek RTL8180 (rev 20)
Cost: 120CNY (US$14.50), mainland China, after bargaining (Feb. 2005) PCI ID: 10ec:8180 (rev 20)
Driver: http://www.alphaweb.com.cn/downloads/Drivers/WIRELESS/AFW-N411.rar (earlier release of the same driver, supplied on CD with the card, works too)
Other: ndiswrapper 0.12; Slackware 10 (kernel 2.4.26).

----

If you need help with installation, just let us know.
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  #3  
Old June 5th, 2005, 04:53 AM
bAdWaYz bAdWaYz is offline
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I agree with kage that the ndis way is going to more likely be the easy fix for you. The reason that card shows up as realtek 8180 is because thats the chipset used on the card so windows picks it up as that. I did look on the realtek website and saw some drivers for linux rh and such but depending on what kern you have they will or won't work. This would mean you may have to get the kern source then update your kern then install the drivers. This for a newbie would be a bit much so once again I agree that ndiswrapper would be the best way to go about it.
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Old June 5th, 2005, 10:57 PM
heatopher heatopher is offline
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Thanks Guys,

Nice to see that there are people out there who care enough to answer my very narrow question. If only the rest of life were like that...

I'll have a look at that stuff, and will report back. Thanks again,

Heatopher
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  #5  
Old June 6th, 2005, 06:31 PM
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kage kage is offline
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Hope all goes well for you.
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  #6  
Old June 8th, 2005, 02:00 PM
heatopher heatopher is offline
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got it

Hi guys,

I'm writing to you from within Linux. Fantastic! Well, I've got plenty more to learn, and I haven't got time to do it all right now, but anyway I'm very pleased to have got here. I'm not sure whether or not there's a firewall working here, so I'm not going to stay on too long. Could you just tell me where I ought to be looking for that kind of thing?

Thanks again for all your help. It's pretty intimidating stuff even for an amateur nerd like me.
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