[ltp] wireless with ipw2100

[Tim Prince]

At 09:12 PM 12/29/2004, Allen Knutson wrote:

>(This is in strange parallel with my first Thinkpad, on which I didn't
>try out the floppy drive for a year, and it turned out that while it
>did exist it didn't work. Which made upgrading the BIOS more difficult.)

My T40 works fine, with SuSE, with the floppy plugged into the docking 
device, but there is no way to connect it otherwise.  Windows doesn't 
support it even in the docked configuration.


>Anyway, the two ways to find out are with lspci, and your eyes.
>
>% /sbin/lspci
>  ...
>02:00.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller 
>(rev 02)
>02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82801BD PRO/100 VE (MOB) Ethernet 
>Controller (rev 81)
>
>I gather this should end with the 2100, and mine doesn't.

Yes, lspci shows me the 2100 after the pro/1000.


>I think I've got the 2100 software all set up with no place to go.
>Before I order the Intel PRO 2100 for myself, does anyone here have
>a particularly good argument why I might get a different card? (Other
>than "you mustn't use a card with a closed source, albeit free, driver!")

I believe there is at least one other brand which separates wireless card 
support into a closed "firmware" module, along with an open driver.
After a year of poking away at ipw2100, under SuSE 9.2 now I have the card 
coming up associated to my access point, but still during boot there is the 
message "type-wlan interface not found,"  the meaning of which I have yet 
to decipher.  So I continue to use Windows when not on a linux-friendly LAN.


Tim Prince