[ltp] Thinkpad T60p Wireless card Advice

[John Jason Jordan]

On Tue, 25 Dec 2007 19:02:00 +0100
Florian Reitmeir <florian@reitmeir.org> dijo:

> > >Glenn <gsaberton@foomagic.org> dijo:
> > >>If the current atheros card is an n card, then I guess you should go for 
> > >>the 4965, as you should already have the three antenna in the computer.

> > John Jason Jordan wrote:
> > >Under no circumstances get the 4965. My T61 came with the 4965 and it
> > >hangs up randomly. It does appear to work OK on 32-bit Linux, but why
> > >buy something with problems? Google on 4965 and you will see what I
> > >mean about the problems.

> > Regrettably, I concur that the 4965AGN has required me to switch back to 
> > 32-bit Windows so far in the 4 days I have had it.  There is (partial) 
> > support only in the latest FC8, ubuntu 7.1, or SuSE 10.3 distros, the 
> > latter being the only one I have tried from this group.  With kernels 
> > prior to 2.6.18, it won't even show up in lspci.  On my home router, I 
> > can get it to associate by using iwconfig, but I don't get any data 
> > across.  I had more success at a customer's site, with non-passworded 
> > wireless.  I'm not inclined to try ndiswrapper in view of past 
> > experience and lack of positive recommendations.  I'm not even certain 
> > there is adequate support for 64-bit Windows.

> the 4965AGN and the 3945 drivers will be included into 2.6.24, and for using
> a 2.6.23.12 with the wireless drivers compiled myself they do work nicely.

Florian,

For me the 4965AGN on Gutsy x86_64 was autodetected and set up during installation of Gutsy. However, it hangs up randomly, moreso when the signal is weak. When you say "they do work nicely," does that mean the 4965AGN on 64-bit Linux? If so, which distro? And do you have the problem of the wireless suddenly hanging up on you? 

If i recall correctly, the problem has been discussed on this list. Here are some links from Ubuntu forums where the problem is also discussed:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=587922&highlight=wireless+t61
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/149214/comments/24
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=537523&highlight=wireless+t61
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=511974&highlight=how+to+upgrade+kernel

The last link is a how-to involving upgrading the kernel to 2.6.24. I still have 2.6.22 and I don't want to upgrade to 2.6.24 because it is still pretty rough.

jjj@Devil7:~$ uname -a
Linux Devil7 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 05:28:27 UTC 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

What I did instead was to buy a Netgear WG511 for $17 on eBay. Unfortunately, when I bought it I was not aware that Netgear uses "WG511" for three different cards, two of which won't work on Linux. Naturally, I got one of the bad ones. However, I did finally get it working on 64-bit Gutsy using ndiswrapper. I've disabled the 4965AGN in the BIOS and will just use the WG511 until there is a fix.