[ltp] wireless with ipw2100

[Allen Knutson]

> I've got a problem trying to bring up wireless on my x31 using
> ipw2100 driver.  I followed every step from
> http://dev.gentoo.org/~brix/papers/X31/X31.html and in the end
> iwconfig shows no wireless card.

I know this sounds like tech support 101, but are you sure you have
such a card at all? I didn't get around to setting up wireless on my X31
for about a year (getting Linux onto it without a CD drive was hard
enough, which I did before kernels existed that could handle the driver),
and when I finally tried recently, I found that no amount of fiddling
with the software could overcome the fact that I actually hadn't
gotten such a card. Having ordered it through a bureaucracy, I doubt
I will ever find out how that happened.

(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.)

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. (It will soon,
when I'm home from the holidays.)

To use your eyes, first remove the battery and power cord, then the
four screws on the bottom with a little picture of a keyboard. Then
push on the back of the mouse buttons, and the keyboard will pop out
of the case. Underneath on the left is a spot for the mini-PCI card.
(I didn't trust lspci.)

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!")
								Allen K.