WG511 (Prism54/PrismGT) on Linux (Fedora Core 3)
After fiddling for a bit, I finally got my Netgear WG511 wireless PCMCIA card working on my laptop with Fedora Core 3. This was a sidetrack from my recent efforts of testing my wireless security.
To save anyone a bit of hassle, you can feel free to download the WG511DCB.arm file here. In Fedora Core 3, you'll copy this file to
/lib/firmware
and rename it
cd /lib/firmware
mv WG511DCB.arm isl3890
Note that earlier versions of Fedora (and likely other versions of Linux) have this firmware directory elsewhere. (See follow up below.) You may need to locate this directory if it's not at /lib/firmware. Please also note the version of your WG511, see the notes below.
You'll also need to add alias eth1 islpci_cb to your /etc/modprobe.conf file.
After the WG511DCB.arm file is in place, insert the PCMCIA card and type...
ifconfig ethX up
ifconfig ethY down
Where X is the appropriate number of your ethernet device, and Y is the number of your wired network hardware, if any. Usually the laptop's on-board ethernet is eth0 and your wireless card with be eth1.
You'll also need to make sure that the rpm package "wireless-tools" is installed. This seems to install by default with Fedora Core 3. If not, you should be able to yum it from a repository with ease. Once you're sure it's installed, you'll need to send applicable wireless parameters to the ethernet interface you just brought up. For example:
iwconfig ethX essid "myssid" key (hex string of WEP key) enc on
That should be all that's required, but check out the available parameters for iwconfig. You may need to supply the channel value and other variables if this command doesn't work for you. Also pay attention to the input of the WEP key. My example mentions using a 104 bit (13 byte) hex string, but you can also pass the 13 character string if available, so see the documentation.
At this point, you have created this wireless link. You'll need to get an IP address to play on the network. You can either request an IP Address dynamically with
dhclient ethX
or, for a static address
ifconfig ethX X.X.X.X subnet 255.255.255.0
Where X.X.X.X is your desired private IP Address.
A few notes:
Using the firmware from the Prism54 site did not allow me to speak/connect to my network with WEP encryption. Without WEP encryption, the Prism54 firmware worked fine. Despite my best efforts, I could not get my Fedora Core 3 installation to work with WEP with the Prism54.org firmware. In fact, after I booted to Windows, the card work not work with WEP also under Windows. I'm not certain if Windows does a firmware check when the card is initialized, but if not - you could essentially render your WG511 card useless. I highly suggest the ".arm" file from above. Also, the ".arm" file is not readily available on the Internet (aside from here), it should be on the Netgear CD provided with your WG511.
Also, very important, like many networking vendors, Netgear releases different versions of products with the same model number. My card is a WG511 version 1. Check Netgear's site on how to differentiate between the versions of their hardware. Many posts around the web state that users have had trouble trying to use mismatched firmware with mismatched hardware. You may wisht to read Prism54.org's supported cards as a starting point.
Follow ups:
I failed to mention when initially posting that you'll need to ensure that your kernel supports hotplug/firmware loading (I believe recent distributions should include this by default.) You'll also need to make sure the approprite user tools are installed. Do a Google search on firmware.agent.
On LinuxQuestions.org, one user posted improved response with using the above .arm file.
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