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Ubuntu Linux & Old Laptop

C

cipher00

Golden Member
Ok, this is getting frustrating. Or, maybe I just shouldn't be this cheap.

I have installed Linux Ubuntu 7.04 on my (very old) Dell Inspiron 5000 (600/500 MHz, 12 GB). I have added ndiswrapper to the system in some vain hope that I can install my Linksys WPC300N wireless PCMCIA card on the machine and get it to find my router (WPA - I know, Ubantu is not very forgiving of this, but that's another problem). Ubantu seems to think that all laptops have internal wireless cards, and mine doesn't. The problem is not so much that Linux doesn't know about the card as I can't get the Dell to power up the card itself, so Ubantu can't identify it. I'm stumped. 😕

Any ideas about how to get Linux Ubantu to id a card?

Thanks as usual. Happy 4th.

Cipher
 
Well first, it's Ubuntu. And second it looks like ndiswrapper is your only hope since that's a new Broadcom chipset and I really doubt the bcm43xx drivers will support it.

If you run 'lspci' after inserting the card does it show up there? It's been awhile since I've used my notebook but I think PCMCIA cards show up on the PCI bus in newer kernels. If not you should also have the lspcmcia command if you have the pcmciautils package installed so try that too. If the card shows up in either of those then that's not your problem.
 
Thanks (or thunks? 😱). Somehow I keep misspelling that, and exactly that way.

Anyway, I will try the pcmcia package(s). I'm a bit confused since I'm not getting any power indications for the card, but I didn't for Win2k either until completely installed.
 
boot up, type dmesg and check the last few lines. Plug the card in, and type "dmesg" again to see if it added something to the bottom. If it, did, let us know what it shows.

Also, Ubuntu doesn't care if it's cardbus versus onboard MiniPCI, it cares more about what chipset it's running (which in this case is a crappy one)
 
I'm a bit confused since I'm not getting any power indications for the card, but I didn't for Win2k either until completely installed.
Click to expand...

The lights probably don't come on until the driver turns on the radio.
 
Nothinman, nweaver - thanks.

Running lspci returned, at the bottom:

"06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43XG (rev 01)"

lspcmcia noted the card and told me to run lspci for more information. As for dmesg, when I ran that it returned:

"543.636000 pc card: Cardbus card inserted into Slot 1"

So, it looks like the laptop is recognizing the card. I've found the .inf and .sys files on the (Windows) installer disk. So now I have to figure out how to get ndiswrapper to work. I've installed that:

"sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common"

though I can't seem to find it. I'll keep at it.

Thanks again.

Cipher
 
yeah, I don't know much about ndis wrapper, I always buy cards with native (or at least non ndiswrapper) support.
 
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