Getting Linksys WPC54G v1.2 working under Kubuntu with ndiswrapper

I used my Linksys WPC54G v1.2 card with Linux before. I used to run a debianized Knoppix installation on the same laptop and the card worked great. This time however it didn't want to cooperate. My kubuntu did not accept the little green card :(

I actually followed the Ubuntu Nidswrapper Howto very carefully. I grabbed the source from sourceforge, compiled it into a deb and then installed it. Then I installed the windows .inf file.

Nidswrapper did not complain. Dmesg did not show me any error messages. In fact, the whole installation procedure went without a hitch.

The link light on the card even started blinking at some point but I had no internet connection. I suspect that I might have fucked up the WEP settings somehow. I will try this trick again, once I'm on a non-encrypted network.

Btw, putting ndiswrapper in /etc/modules was a really dumb idea. The system basically got stuck trying to initialize it. After 5 minutes of failed attempts to initialize wlan0 gave up, rebooted into recovery mode and commented out ndiswrapper from /etc/modules. After that the system booted just fine.

I have no clue why it didn't work for me. I think did everything correctly. There was no errors, no crashes no big issues. It simply did not connect. I hate this types of problems because they are really hard to diagnose. When you have an error message you can at least research it. When something simply does not work, even though it should - who the hell knows that happened.

I will try this again with a non WEP networks. Meanwhile I have a brand new, shiny, fully supported proxim orinoco card in the mail. They are tad on the expensive side, but hey - if it works, it will be worth every penny :)

Tags: kubuntu, ubuntu, ubuntu wireless, wireless, wireless ndiswrapper, ndiswrapper, linksys, linksys wpc54g, wpc54g, proxim, orinoco, proxim orinoco, ndiswapper wpc54g, ndiswrapper issues