Suse and Agere Wireless

[rodent43]

Hi Folks,

I have recently been given a laptop that has a built in Mini PCI Wireless card (agere) according to Windows...

I have partitioned the drive to make it a dual boot...and installed SuSe 9.1 Pro...

Every has been running smooth for some time now but i just got access to a Wireless Access Point so started to set up the agere card...

but i cant get no where...SuSe does not seem to find it...

has anyone had or have a machine with inbuilt card like this and if so...help :)

any comments appreciated

[rdeschene2]

I recently setup a wireless PCMCIA card on my Dell laptop -- please see the attached link to my webpage on this where I describe how I proceeded through this and some helpful links and commands as well.

http://web.ripnet.com/~rdeschen/Dell_Latitude_C600_-_SuSE_8_1.html

A search of alt.os.linux.suse indicates that the Agere unit is likely well-supported under linux, you just might have to get the particular drivers for this chipset off the web. For this reason, the first step would be to use the cardctl command as I indicate on my webpage to more exactly identify the hardware you have.

As this is an internal unit, I assume it may be on a mini-PCI card, in which case you may have to use another command to determine the exact manufacturer's ID (which you pretty much need to know to be sure you are trying out the compatible driver).

Good luck,
Rick D.

[rodent43]

thx m8, appreciate the response...

i think your right, i need another command to determine this card...the cardctl did not return anything other than

Socket 0:
no product info available

so i am trying to find out what command is needed to now :-/

[rdeschene2]

If it's a mini-pci card, try this command:

/sbin/lspci -vv

It should all the details of everything on the PCI bus -- or at least everything that the hardware will report.

Good luck.

[rodent43]

Yeah m8, i tried lspci last night and got the following response

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P/KN266 Host Bridge
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP]
0000:00:09.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller
0000:00:0a.0 Network controller: Lucent Microelectronics: Unknown device ab34
0000:00:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 80)
0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 80)
0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)
0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
0000:00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT8233/A/C/VT8235 PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
0000:00:11.6 Communication controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. Intel 537 [AC97 Modem] (rev 80)
0000:00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 74)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. VT8375 [ProSavage8 KM266/KL266]

I think the one im interested in is the 0000:00:0a.0 Network controller: Lucent Microelectronics: Unknown device ab34

I tried looking round the net for drivers and it keeps taking me back to Agere so i downloaded there drivers but had problems building and installing...so i am struggling here...shame as every other little thing ive had on this laptop has got sorted...i really dont wanna go back to using windows :'(

[rdeschene2]

From what I can gather Lucent made (or sold) wireless devices using the Agere chipset, so I think you're right and that is the device.

Given that you've found what appears to be right driver for it and cannot compile it, I don't know what else I can do to help. Possibly the driver is intended for kernel 2.4 -- I do not know if that would make a difference.

This project (ostensibly) allows one to use Windows API to run WLAN cards. I know it by reputation only, I have never used it myself.

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

[rodent43]

you have been a great help mate...

I didnt want to go down the windows drivers path but i had tried ndiswrapper with no joy...and i also tried Linxaut i think its called and that just reported that the the device was not there for the driver i installed...

thx again for all your help dude, it is really appreciated...

i was hoping someone on here might of had the same card or problem but i guess i will either keep trying or just use the rj45 (wired network) connection :confused: