TC wifi with a Hawking 54M 802.11g PCMCIA card

[Linuxrookie]

My handle says it all.  I'm a recent (very recent) windows transplant.  I apologize in advance for my ignorance.  I'm trying to use TC on a 850MHZ Dell Latitude C800 w/250Meg RAM for a dedicated genealogy machine.  I plan to give it to my non-techno, 63 year old, younger sister to use.  It (and the HWC54G Hawking PCMCIA card) are fully functional under Windows but incredibly slow.  The whole system also works under PUPPY Linux but still not as fast as I'd like at browsing and especially at web video.  I can't get TC to recognize the PCMCIA card.  No LEDs. Nothing.  Even though PUPPY automatically sees the thing.
All I have to do in PUPPY is select the SSID and type in the WPA password.  It seems to me that this means there are appropriate firmware/drivers available in LINUX but I can't seem to find them anywhere.  I'm beginning to suspect that even if I could find them I wouldn't know what to do with them.  Anyone willing to invest some time on me or should I just stick with PUPPY.  TNX

[Juanito]

Perhaps the first thing to try is to copy & paste the output of "lsmod" in puppy here, so we can see which driver is used for your pcmcia card.

[Linuxrookie]

Is this what you mean?

[Rich]

Hi Linuxrookie
You might want to replace that file with a plain text file so that it can be viewed with any editor or
browser.

[Linuxrookie]

Rich, is this better?

TNX

OOPS!  I don't think so. Just tried to read it.  Sorry, I'll try again

[Linuxrookie]

Rich,

How is this?  Hopefully better.  Otherwise I'm in trouble.

TNX

[maro]

Hmm, this might be just me, but the 'lsmod' output is a bit too "terse" for my taste. I therefore like to suggest to run
    lspci -knnv
on the Puppy system and attach the output here as well. And whilst you are at it, attaching the dmesg output won't do any harm either.

[Linuxrookie]

Maro,  the lspci & dmesg outputs are attached.  I hope I saved them in plain text mode.  Thanks for your (and Rich & Juanito's)  interest in my dilemma.

-linuxrookie

[maro]

Due to the two latest files I'm now reasonably confident that the following is correct:

(1) The device in question is recognized by Puppy as 'Texas Instruments ACX 111 54Mbps Wireless Interface [104c:9066]'. I wanted to be sure as this page lists several different devices with a productID of 'HWC54G'. Mind you that was what I kind of expected as the 'lsmod' output contained a subtle "hint" in this direction. What is OTOH mildly confusing is that 'lspci' lists 'acx_pci' as the kernel driver in use, whilst 'lsmod' does not show a module of that name. BTW, which Puppy version are you using?

(2) Looking trough the TC 3.x kernel sources I was not sure whether TC 3.x would support your card. Furthermore searching our forum here (and reading some older posts from user 'MikeLockmoore' mentioning such a device) I've now come to the conclusion that TC 3.x might not do it "out of the box" (or even with the respective extensions installed). Initially I suspected that it might be a case of missing firmware, as the 'dmesg' output showed the need for such, but I guess that is less likely now.

You could give it another try with TC for example by installing the 'wifi.tcz' extension and attempting to configure your card. We expect this to be a failure, but it might be just enough for TC to try to activate the card and that could leave some helpful trace in the 'dmesg' output. BTW, I personally find it easier to redirect output (e.g. via dmesg > dmesg.txt) and then attach that file here instead of doing copy-paste from screen output, but that it up to you.

Anyway, your best bet is IMO to hope that Mike reads this thread and for him to supply you with the guidance of how to overcome your issue. You could of course (politely) "poke" him a little bit via a direct PM.

[Rich]

Hi maro
This machine appears to have a built in 3com wired Ethernet controller. Any chance it might be
conflicting with the wireless setup?

[maro]

... This machine appears to have a built in 3com wired Ethernet controller. Any chance it might be conflicting with the wireless setup?

Well, your are correct that TC is by default not handling the case of two active network interfaces very well. But from the description of "... No LEDs. Nothing. ..." I took that the OP was not even close to run into that particular issue.

In the end (when the wireless interface is finally working) the simplistic work-around would be to either not have the ethernet cable attached or explicitly shut down that interface. But for now there are (at least IMHO) "bigger fish to fry".

[Linuxrookie]

Juanito, Rich & Maro (in order of appearance)

Thank you for your time and feedback.  Just some feedback to you, I'm using Tinycore ver. 3.8.1 and Puppy ver 5.2.8. also I did try Wicd but though it downloaded and drive activity indicated that it TRIED to install.  I have never been able to get a button on WBAR or the GUI on my desktop. 

Though I haven't gotten the WiFi working, the lsmod, lspci & dmesg commands and outputs have given me lots to mull over as I dink with my $10 special and load different extensions, install different pc cards etc.  You guys have been great and I think I'll back off & experiment for awhile.  (Oh, I especially like that "redirect" tip) 

I do have one question though, how do I open and read the *doc.tcz files.  I've tried downloading and installing them to no avail.  If I download/install the associated program (ex. tuxpaint.tcz) that works fine, but not the docs.  Well anyway, if you've got a few minutes.  Once again, thank you for your time.

TNX

Steve

[gerald_clark]

The doc extensions will load into /usr/local/share/doc/
How to read them will depend on the contents.
The simplest method will be to use your web browser.
Ex: file:///usr/local/share/doc/

[Linuxrookie]

gerald_clark

This is great.  Thanks.

linuxrookie