Hey everybody,

Great forum, I've been reading here a lot last couple of days, as well as a couple other Linux forums. I'm brand new to Linux as of about 2 days ago. I downloaded several different distros to try on an old Dell Latitude I have. I runs a 500MHZ Pentium 3, 128mb Ram, last OS was Win98SE. Antix is the best distro I have found for it, it runs pretty snappy for such an old computer. I've learned a lot yesterday working with it, I didn't even know what terminal in Linux was, but I've figured out quite a bit on my own, but now I'm stumped.

I've got the Linksys WPC54G version 4 wireless card, and my home connection uses WEP. I initially used the appropriate driver from Linksys with NDISWRAPPER installing it. It worked as far as recognizing the hardware, loading the card, and I could scan and attempt to hook to my network, but the security I think is what has it hung up. When I put in the WEP key, it states it cannot connect using provided key (I'm 100% sure it's correct).

So I googled"WEP Linux WPC54gV4" and got this:

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=324967"
linktext was:"http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=324967"
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So I found that particular driver (the INPROCOMM) on another site where some said it worked with WEP, I installed it and it recognizes the hardware and shows the list of connections, but won't accept the key. There aren't any"open" connections around me to try, but I'm fairly confident it's the WEP holding me up.

I'm running AntiX M11 686, not sure what version of NDISWRAPPER, I've have to open and do NDISWRAPPER -v to check, can't remember right now.

The computer doesn't have any internet connection right now, so posting any logs (if long) would be difficult, but if somebody thinks they can help, I'd be willing to do it.

If there are no ideas, I'd be willing to buy a cheap PCMCIA wireless card that has native linux support for WEP, something more"plug and play". I've read that Linksys cards are notoriously difficult on Linux, this one being particular. It's listed as supported, but seems like many posts I've seen say it's not stable even when it is"working". So any recommendations on that are welcome too.

I have an old laptop that uses a linksys pcmcia card, I have similar problems with wep / wpa2. I have not found a true solution to the problem, as wep works for sometimes and wpa2 never works. A work around solution though is using routers running wpa encryption type or no encryption, so if it is a possibility I would say to try changing your routers encryption to wpa.

Thanks for the response, nice to know it's not just me __{{emoticon}}__

Let me ask you a couple of things, I could switch to WPA, but it would be a pain, but if I know it'll work, I'd be willing (I'd just have to switch everything obviously, few laptops, Playstation, I can't even remember what all right now lol)

When you have a problem connecting to WEP, does it not accept the key, but recognizes the network? That's what is happening.
Is it pretty stable in AntiX when connected to WPA?

It would be pretty nice to get this little laptop working, I'd use it for reading news, forums, and mainly to learn Linux. I'm pretty excited to start using Linux!

So far I have had no problems with wpa, it has been really stable. With wep it will except the password but not recognize the network, except the password and the network but will never receive a valid ip address, will just never except the password, or in the very odd case will actually work ( this was with 1 network, with a 16 character password ).

Yep, sounds just like what I'm dealing with. I think I'll switch my home wireless to WPA and give it a shot in the next couple of days, since it sounds like it works well. I'll post my results when I do. I only have the INPROCOMM driver installed (I heard having more than 1 can screw it up), I'll try with it, then do the LINKSYS driver if it doesn't work.

thanks!

Alright, I switched my home network to WPA. I had the linksys driver loaded, and tried to make it work, and my home network connection showed up as WPA under Network Interfaces, I put the key in etc. But when I tried to set up a wireless profile connection, it showed up as WEP. So I googled and found this:


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.wirelessforums.org/alt-internet-wireless/linksys-wpc54g-v4-wpa-solution-60919.html"
linktext was:"http://www.wirelessforums.org/alt-inter ... 60919.html"
====================================


So I have to use the Inprocomm driver. Installed it (uninstalled the other), hardware present, modprobe doesn't make the link light flash or show in the list of network interfaces.

lspci -v for my connection shows:

02:00.0 Ethernet Controller: InProcomm Inc. IPN 2220 802.11g
Subsystem Linksys WPC54G v4 802.11g Wireless-G notebook Adapter
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 11
I/O Ports at 1000 [disabled] [size=32}
Memory at 18000800 [32 bit non-prefetchable] [disabled]
Memory at 18000000 [32 bit non-prefetchable] [disabled]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2




BTW, I re-installed antix and tried loading this driver, still doing the same thing, figured that might help since I have installed, uninstalled, and re-installed so many times.

BTW, I know the link above refers to XP SP3, but it only made sense to me that if WPA doesn't work on there with the Linksys driver, it wouldn't with ndiswrapper.

When I modprobe with the Linksys driver installed, picks it right up.

Thing is, when I was first trying to get this card working, I remember I had the Inprocomm driver working the first time I installed, but I can't remember what I did __{{emoticon}}__