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Wireless USB box

zedkatuf Bristol Wireless News, Local IT News 10 Comments »

I’ve just got a wireless USB box – I’ll post the info here as soon as I can get to it (it’s at work)….has anyone any experience of getting this sort of thing to work under Linux and, if so, which distro?

More info soon.

10 Responses to Wireless USB box

  1. matt October 3, 2003 at 3:11 pm #

    Bails has the atmel usb devices working fine under debian. As with any wifi + linux it comes down to chipset in the end. Most if not all the usb devices I have seen are atmel or prism (altho afaik you cant use hostap with usb prism devices :()

  2. zedkatuf October 3, 2003 at 7:05 pm #

    OK, ta for the info Matt. I’ve looked at the win98 inf file that comes on the CDROM, and it identifies the driver as follows:

    Copyright 2000 WLAN.
    ; AT76C503A based FastVNET USB 11M Network Adapter

    ..so it looks like it might be an atmel clone.

    I found a link to some folks who are trying to get it working under Redhat:

    http://iprserv.jura.uni-leipzig.de/pipermail/atmel-wlan-usb/2002-November/000702.html

    …there might be some more uptodate info out there…I’ll see if I can have a go at getting it working sometime next week.

    Dez.

  3. zedkatuf October 3, 2003 at 7:11 pm #

    http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:VyNmq-WL75UJ:www.jennings.homelinux.net/atmel_old.html+FastVNET&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 also contains a link….

    ok, ’nuff clogging up the BB..time to go home
    😀

  4. bails_ October 9, 2003 at 11:34 am #

    Dez you have a choice of two drivers iether the at706c or the atmelwlan driver. They both work. The only thing of note with any atmel usb bwifi thing is, you must compile your kernel without SMP support or you’ll get a kernel panic as soon as you plug the damn thing in. Oh and use uhci not usb-uhci for your usb subsystem. 😮

  5. zedkatuf2 October 14, 2003 at 10:10 pm #

    Hey, tnx bails..will try it sometime "real soon now"…time to check to see if my RH box at school has the dreaded SMP support built in (I bet it has 🙁 )

    Dez

  6. zedkatuf_ October 22, 2003 at 6:36 am #

    OK, I’ve compiled the latest atmelwlandriver from CVS & made sure I didn’t select the gui apps to be compiled, as they needed some wxwindows libs which weren’t on my RH 7.3 box.

    I’ve had a butchers at:

    http://www.jennings.homelinux.net/atmel_old.html

    & followed the instructions.

    …as soon as I get the chance at school, I’ll give it a test (al I’l need to do is remove the usb cable & re-insert it to see if it works).

    I’m not sure which kernel module to load yet, as the usb box doesn’t identify itself ion the lid.

    More later….

  7. zedkatuf_ December 3, 2003 at 4:32 pm #

    OK, I tried using the at76c503a driver with a Redhat 7.3 box, but I got multiple errors when the module loaded. I suspect the RH kernel was either compiled with SMP, or the kernel was too onld; I think I remember reading that it needed 2.4.21 or newer to work properly, whereas the RH box was running 2.4.18

    I’ve now got Knoppix on my home machine, running a newer kernel. so may be my next port of call is to insert the usb box & see what happens next (after compiling the module of course!).

    Cheers,

    Dez.

  8. zedkatuf_ December 5, 2003 at 1:21 pm #

    OK, I’ve installed the driver on a laptop I’ve got on long term loan. It’s running Knoppix 3.32, with kernel 2.4.22-xfs using the at driver mentioned in previous posts.

    Modprobing the driver works fine & I’ve got some basic iwconfig cammands to work….

    I haven’t yet tested to see if I can connect with my pda as I’ve now got to re-RTFM abt iwconfig to get an IP addy etc on the usb device….

    …will post more soon, as progress occurs.

    Dez.

  9. zedkatuf_ December 5, 2003 at 8:07 pm #

    Righty ho, I’ve played with some iwconfig & ifconfig commands & I’ve successfully used the usb box in ad-hoc & managed (aka infrastructure ???) modes.

    I managed to connect to our school’s AP in managed mode & ssh’d into the box when it was in ad-hoc mode.

    Now my question now is: how do I set up the computer to allow me to act as a gateway (ie Access Point)….perhaps time to do some more RTFM’ing…… 🙂

    Dez.

  10. zedkatuf_ December 24, 2003 at 11:55 am #

    With some excellent hekp from Bails on using iptables, I’ve now got a knoppix-based box with the USB card attached.

    It’s not an AP…the box is just operating in ad-hoc mode…but I can access www using port-forwarding, which is good news for me as I use my wirelss (zaurus) pda a lot at home & work.
    Visit http://bloop.homelinux.net:8100
    ..not much there at the moment, but more will appear over time