Compaq WL210 on Redhat 7.1

[Jan Hurst]

Hi all,

I'd just like to relay my experiences so far with a Compaq WL210 card
and a Redhat 7.1 machine(s).

I am relatively new to running this stuff under linux, so bear with me,
hopefully ppl can give me any pointers or suggestions for things I've
missed. I've run these cards quite happily under various Windows
flavours with great success (apart from Windows XP not having drivers
for a Compaq USB adapter I have.)

The card worked out of the box with the 2.4.2-2 kernel that comes with
RH7.1. After a lot of hands on learning, its using the wvlan_cs driver.
I actually got the card working at this point.

One of the first things I do on a RH7.1 machine is get a newer kernel
and compile in a whole bunch of goodies (iptables support, pppoe etc
etc). I grabbed 2.4.10, recompiled, added what I thought were the right
drivers. Rebooted and boom, no wireless. I spent a fair bit of time on
that machine and on my desktop machine trying to figure out what went
wrong.

After enough digging through web sites etc, I realized that just like a
few sites state, Redhat 7.1's PCMCIA scripts suck some serious ass.

So, I grabbed pcmcia-cs 3.(i forget, current release though).x. After
some more reading I've got a new kernel going, using the PCMCIA core and
drivers from the kernel and the pcmcia-cs package scripts etc. Things
improved. The cards become detected, drivers modprobe etc. (Oh, I have
to change the Intersil line in /etc/pcmcia/config to modprobe orinoco_cs
rather than wvlan_cs.) Things look ok, I can iwconfig the device, bring
it up, do the usual linuxy stuff to it.

Unfortuantely, It plain won't transmit. I didn't spend a lot of time
examining specific card related settings, thats my next step. Failing
that, I'm considering switching back to the wvlan_cs driver (which
appeared to work before).

Has anyone had any experiences with the Compaq cards, any tips or
suggestions are welcome.

-jan