Thinkpads Forum

(Cross-posted at fedoraforum.org, but I figured you guys know Thinkpads better than the average Linux guru)

Hello all,

I recently acquired an IBM Thinkpad 570; it has no inbuilt networking whatsoever, and neither does the Ultrabase docking station that came with it. I've installed Fedora 11 via LiveCD (using the Ultrabase DVD-ROM drive) [I couldn't get the installer to start on the F12 CD], with no problems thusfar.

Here's the issue: I need to get networking going so I can update the system, etc etc...I'm trying to use a Linksys WPC11 PCMCIA card with it to connect to an Apple Airport Extreme ABGN router, which is broadcasting a WPA-protected signal. When the card is inserted, my networking icon in the top Gnome toolbar says no connection, and does not display any available networks (this even when I was literally right next to the router). Furthermore, when I attempt to use the "Connect to a hidden network" dialogue, it does not allow for WPA protection. I'm certain the hardware supports it, as I've used this exact hardware combo fine when the computer was running XP. Thoughts/help? Am I out of luck with this card? Note that I've tried disabling all security on the network, and the card still doesn't see the network, nor will it let me manually connect....I'm a relative Linux newbie, and I'd LOVE to make this work...any input would be much appreciated!

Here is lspci output to try to identify the hardware so I can get a driver (?)

$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge (rev 03)
00:02.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1450 (rev 03)
00:02.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1450 (rev 03)
00:05.0 Multimedia audio controller: Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24/30 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator] (rev 01)
00:06.0 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
00:06.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
00:06.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
00:06.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
00:07.0 Communication controller: Agere Systems WinModem 56k (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Neomagic Corporation NM2200 [MagicGraph 256AV] (rev 20)

Thanks for any help/insights!

Well I don't know either the 570 or the WPC11, however it looks as if the hardware is not recognized so you're wasting your time trying to look at connectivity issues (encryption, etc). Have a look at the output of lsmod which will show you which kernel modules are loading, but to be meaningful you need to know what you are looking for:

Assume you have a ver.4 of the Linksys card? That version apparently had a Realtek chipset (ver.3 and earlier used Prism chipset which were reasonably well supported in Linux)

If so you'll need to see if you can find firmware/driver for RTL8180 chipset (or another Realtek chipset which is compatible) - this is the module info you'll be looking for in lsmod. You may need to compile this yourself from source. Remember having to do this with a Zydas chipset-based USB wireless adapter years ago - not too difficult and it gives you the opportunity to tweak the scripts if you feel so inclined <g>

But even if available, the driver may be kernel version-specific so may not work with your F11 install (or worse, may work and then break if you update the kernel)

As a general observation, the mainstream Linux distros have much better support for wireless chipsets now than even 5 years ago, *but* some distros are dropping support for even widely used "legacy" peripherals (e.g. the last Suse distro didn't include the ipw2200 firmware on its LiveCD (saving space?) )

Another option is to use ndiswrapper which would let you use the Win (ndis) driver for the card under Linux - but there is a $ cost.

You might be better off looking for a different card with better Linux support !

lspcmcia output would have been more appropriate than lspci, but we appreciate the effort

Considering that yours is a wireless B-only card, the best approach is probably to get a new one. Do your research first and avoid Broadcom-based chipsets

If you have v3 and lower revision of the WPC11 then wireless should work out of the box, but the orinoco_cs driver does not support WPA. There are WPA patches (and suitable firmware) that you can find on the internet, so its probably possible to get it to work.

Volker wrote:lspcmcia output would have been more appropriate than lspci, but we appreciate the effort

Considering that yours is a wireless B-only card, the best approach is probably to get a new one. Do your research first and avoid Broadcom-based chipsets

If you have v3 and lower revision of the WPC11 then wireless should work out of the box, but the orinoco_cs driver does not support WPA. There are WPA patches (and suitable firmware) that you can find on the internet, so its probably possible to get it to work.

Thanks for your reply!

Oops, yeah, lspcmcia would be more useful, huh

My WPC11 is a v3...so it *should* be working out of the box. So much for that...
Does it make sense that the card wouldn't even be showing available networks as-is right now? the SSID of the network in question is broadcast, so there's nothing to crazy going on there.

Here's the lspcmcia output:

$ lspcmcia
Socket 0 Bridge: [yenta_cardbus] (bus ID: 0000:00:02.0)
Socket 1 Bridge: [yenta_cardbus] (bus ID: 0000:00:02.1)
Socket 1 Device 0: [orinoco_cs] (bus ID: 1.0)


The orinoco_cs has got to be it....now, what to do with it

So it is a v3, thats good. You need the agere_sta_fw.bin in /lib/firmware and a modern kernel. Try

$ dmesg | grep orinoco_cs
orinoco_cs 0.15 (David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au>, Pavel Roskin <proski@gnu.org>, et al)
eth0 (orinoco_cs): not using net_device_ops yet
eth0: orinoco_cs at 1.0, irq 3, io 0x0100-0x013f

....any ideas what ~this~ means? Thanks for your help!

Thats not indicative of an error, but there should be more output from orinoco_cs. Its probably time to install a recent kernel if you want to make any progress.

Volker wrote:Thats not indicative of an error, but there should be more output from orinoco_cs. Its probably time to install a recent kernel if you want to make any progress.

Fair enough. Updating the kernel without internet access is going to be a pain, so I'm going to try the XFCE-based F12 spin to see if I can get it to install properly, then. Thanks for your insights.

As an update--I discovered that an old Netgear MA401 card I had lying around works out of the box, just sans WPA--so after switching my router to WEP+MAC filtering (weaker, yes, but I'll survive for a couple hours...), I got the beastie online! Hopefully after a full slew of updates, the original card will work properly. It's a workaround, anyways. Thanks again for the input, all!

Congratualtions...Good news.