Compaq WL200 on Smoothwall (this time in plain text)

[Ian Castle]

I am sucessfully using a number of WL200 cards, one of them as an Access
Point. The WL200 is based on the intersil prism2 chipset.

There are a number of drivers that you can use:

1) orinoco_cs
2) Samsung (the WL200 is a rebadged Samsung product) sw11dpc_cs driver
3) The linux-wlan-ng prism2_cs driver.

The latter is the one you want to use - get it from
http://www.linux-wlan.org, the other's don't work as well (or even at
all). I'm using 0.1.14-pre3 from a few months ago - but as I've had zero
problems (even sharing IRQs with USB etc) I've had no reason to upgrade
to a newer version.

It would be a good idea to upgrade your firmware to 0.8.0 or later if
you have not already done so. Compaq has a DOS bootable diskette image
that you can use to do this (if you don't have Windows). A later version
(0.8.3) of the firmware is reported to work - but you have to get it
from another manufacturer (e.g. SMC) - I've been to scared to try this -
but I haven't had a need to do so, so I cannot comment on wether this is
worth it or not.

If you want to run the WL200 as a host adaptor then you need [can't
remember the URL] hostap_cs driver. This claims to need a firmware
greater than 0.8.0, but I suspect that this is only for WEP - which I
don't use - I've had no problems other than a message saying "you need
to upgrade your firmware".

If you are using the 2.4.x kernel then you will need the "out-of-kernel"
PCMCIA stack as the PCI-PCMCIA bridge is not recognised, or something
like that. Support for the cirrus PD6729 PCMCIA adapter improved in
about 3.1.21 or so. So again it would be worth picking up a recent
version. I'm using 3.1.27 which is by no means the most recent.

Since installing the host AP driver on my little firewall box the
machine has had an uptime of 160+ days. It is in constant use and has
proven to be extremely reliable (bridging between 802.11b and the
ethernet cable modem and another wired ethernet segment with a server on
it). Performance is as good as I would expect with ftp transfers at
around 630 Kbps throughout the house (which has some thick stone walls).

I have also used an Orinoco gold card as a client with the WL200 based
AP, and that also works fine.

I'm very pleased with it really. And it is all open source/free software
(the samsung stuff is binary only - but you don't want to use that!).

Hope that helps,

Ian.

On Fri, 2002-11-01 at 10:59, Tim McAuley wrote:
> Sorry, didn't realise this client was defaulted to html.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> Hi,
> 
> I am trying to get a Compaq WL200 running on Smoothwall (2.0 Beta). I need
> some help.
> 
> Some information about the set-up and what has been tried so far:
> (I'm not actually at the working machine currently, so forgive me if I can
> provide all error messages)
> - The WL200 is a PCI card but in fact uses the PCMCIA driver (it uses a
> Cirrus Logic PCI-PCMCIA bridge)
> - The wl200 is based on a prism 2 chipset.
> - Smoothwall has a 2.4.19 kernel. It does not have any pcmcia support as
> standard.
> - Smoothwall does not have a gcc compiler so the build of drivers is done on
> a Redhat 8.0 machine.
> - Smoothwall box is a pentium 100.
> 
> First attempt - Download and configure kernel:
> - Downloaded 2.4.19 source.
> - Configured it with module versioning switched off, system = i586,
> experimental switched on, support for orinoco pci enabled.
> - Compiled kernel and modules
> - Copied hermes, orinoco and orinoco_pci over to Smoothwall box.
> - Was able to load hermes and orinoco modules but not orinoco_pci (reason
> now known... not true pci card!.. silly me!)
> 
> Second attempt
> 
> Step one - Download and configure kernel:
> - Downloaded 2.4.19 source.
> - Configured it with module versioning switched off, pcmcia/cardbus support
> disabled, system = classic pentium (same as 586?)
> - Compiled kernel and modules (not sure if I needed to do this, but did it
> anyway)
> - Installed modules (needed to build pcmcia_cs)
> 
> Step two - Downloaded and configured pcmcia
> - Downloaded pcmcia_cs 3.2.1 source
> - Pointed the kernel source and module variables to 2.4.19.
> - Built modules (included the kernel modules because smoothwall doesn't have
> support already... I think)
> 
> Step three - Transfer items to Smoothwall box.
> - Copied across the modules:
>     pcmcia - pcmcia_core, i82365, ds,
> (/lib/modules/2.4.19/kernel/drivers/pcmcia)
>     wl200 - hermes, orinoco, orinoco_cs
> (/lib/modules/2.4.19/kernel/drivers/net/wireless)
> - Copied  across settings (all under etc folder of pcmcia_cs) and placed on
> the below under /etc/pcmcia (created folder)
>     network, network.opts, wireless.opts
> - Copied across bin utilities (not in path currently, just home folder)
> 
> Step four - Try and start up everything and see if we get smoke
> - Able to load pcmcia modules (but not by using modprobe), and only the
> following (which I think is all I need)
>     insmod pcmcia_core, i82365, ds (all worked)
>     insmod hermes, orinoco, orinoco_cs
> - Tried to use cardmgr to initiate drivers
>     pcmcia modules seem to work fine. Found correct chipset. Found wl100
> card (not wl200... but is there much difference apart from packaging?) but
> was unable to connect socket 0 to orinoco_cs (reason: operation not
> permitted).
> 
> Some other info:
> - I can't seem to be able to use modprobe on the pcmcia drivers because it
> complains about a circular dependency.
> - I compile and copied across the wireless extensions but they are not in
> the path... I've just thought about this now... could this be a major flaw?
> Do the extensions need to be in the path for the orinoco_cs driver to be
> used correctly...hmmm fingers crossed!
> - wireless.opts was stripped down and only setting:
>     mode = ah-hoc, rate = auto, freq=3 (also tried channel=3) and a few
> other ones I can't remember.
> - My main learning point on the web has been:
> http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/
> 
> 
> Well that's it for the moment. The main thing here is that I'm unable to
> just download the source on the smoothwall box and the run the install
> options. I have to manually do everything. Over the last few days I feel
> I've progressed a fair bit (i.e. to be able to load the orinoco_cs driver at
> all!) but still need something more.
> 
> I will be at my machine in a few hours so will sending some logs and more
> info then.
> 
> Any ideas greatly received!
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Tim
> 
> 
>