how can I tell if my laptop modem and wifi card will work?

dman777 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2007 Posts: 1004

I am currently useing debian sarge and there are no drivers for my laptop. I am thinking about switching to Gentoo. I have the Gentoo 2006.1 live disk and I have used and I like it alot. But, how can I tell if there are correct drivers for my laptop modem and wifi card? I tried some of the networking programs off of the gui desktop but didn't get anywhere. I would like to find out before I do a full install of Gentoo.

simon_irl · Guru Joined: 07 Oct 2004 Posts: 403 Location: New Zealand

by googling for linux drivers for the kinds of modem and wifi card you have...or perhaps checking this resource about gentoo laptops, or linux on laptops.

linux is linux...if there are linux drivers for your hardware, they'll work on any distro...debian, gentoo, whatever. sarge may not have what you want available via apt-get, and you may have to do some work (e.g. rebuilding your kernel) to get the drivers to play with it, but if you find that gentoo or another distribution works with your laptop, rest assured that your hardware can be made to work with whatever distro you prefer: only the effort involved in getting it to work will vary.

dman777 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2007 Posts: 1004

well, i did a 'lspci' and it recognized my modem. but grrrr.....i can't get it to work! how do i get it to dial out useing the live cd?

madisonicus · Veteran Joined: 20 Sep 2006 Posts: 1130

dman777 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2007 Posts: 1004

it displays detailed information about all PCI buses and devices in the machine. it shows the modem in my laptop as an ATI modem with the revision number....so that's good. i guess it could be bad though if it isn't recognizeing my modem correctly, but i don't think this is the case. i just need to know how to dial out with it in the live cdrom. Also, ifconfig shows ehto 0 eth1 and lo(loop back)....but nothing with the ati name in the info for ifconfig.

madisonicus · Veteran Joined: 20 Sep 2006 Posts: 1130

dman777 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2007 Posts: 1004

i have debian installed permentally on my hard drive... from what i can tell gentoo live cd mounts virtual drives off of the cdrom. is there a way where i can do a 'lspci >textfile' with the gentoo live dvd and have it put it on the permenant hard drive? if i can...i have a program on windows that allows me to view my linux hard drives and i can just post the ascii file on here with all the lspci info.

thanks,
-dman

dman777 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2007 Posts: 1004

Ok, here's the info from lspci and ifconfig -a, respectfully:

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 11)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller ATI
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge
00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:14.6 Modem: ATI Technologies Inc ATI SB400 - AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
05:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
05:09.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:90:4B:F2:D9:E3
BROADCAST NOTRAILERS MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:19 Base address:0x4000

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:9F:AA:33:84
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:20 Base address:0x8000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

Can you tell from this if my Wifi card and dial up modem should work?

madisonicus · Veteran Joined: 20 Sep 2006 Posts: 1130