NetGear A6200 - how to use it?

subox · Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 5:13 am Post subject: NetGear A6200 - how to use it?

Hi,

today I got a wifi adapter netgear A6200.
My iwconfing shows me this:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 7:40 am Post subject:

subox,

You should not need net-wireless/ndiswrapper. That's an interface layer between linux and windows drivers using the ndis standard.
It allows you to use Windows drivers on linux ... sometimes.

net-wireless/broadcom-sta is a kernel driver for some broadcom devices. I think its also provided in kernel now. If so, use the in kernel version as it will be maintained with the kernel.

Your device device 0846:9050, has a Netgear Device ID but it appears to be a BCM43526.
On the Broadcom page for kernel drivers, the chip is listed as unsupported.
That only leaves a Broadcom binary blob of some sort, either for Linux or Windows, with ndiswrapper.

From your

subox · Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 3:13 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the reply.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 3:29 pm Post subject:

subox,

Your dmesg shows that [ 148.334651] ndiswrapper version 1.59 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=no) ndiswrapper loaded.

How did you install the Windows drivers for the NetGear A6200 so that ndiswrapper could wrap them?
ndiswrapper itself is not a driver. Its a translation layer between the Linux kernel and Windows drivers.

I would have expected dmesg to mention the driver in use when you connected the A6200 but theres nothing.
Google says ndiswrapper and Windows drivers is the way to go though.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

subox · Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 3:40 pm Post subject:

I tired to used ndiswrapper -i and paste the *.inf file. I got the file from:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/460277/how-to-get-netgear-a6200-to-work-on-14-04

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 4:02 pm Post subject:

subox,

This old page tells how to install
the windows driver into ndiswrapper. It must be a 32 bit Windows driver and your kernel must be capable of running 32 bit code.

You can skip the the ndiswrapper installation, as you have done that.
Start at "If all went well, you should now have NDISWrapper installed."

The command

khayyam · Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 6:31 pm Post subject:

subox ...

return the card while you still can.

best ... khay

subox · Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 7:07 am Post subject:

NeddySeagoon:

I removed previous driver of A6200_linux (which I found on the old ubuntu forum). Downloaded a few versions from offical web page. All of them install correctly using ndiswrapper and when I load ndiswrapper module, nothing is displayed in dmesg:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 8:53 am Post subject:

subox,

khayyam · Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 6:16 pm Post subject:

subox · Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2016 3:42 am Post subject:

@NeddySeagoon:
as I wrote this is my actual kernel config: CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION is compiled.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2016 10:35 am Post subject:

subox,

I missed that date, sorry.

I'm with khayyam about ndiswrapper. It may work some of the time with some windows drivers and some kernels.
Not all windows drivers are ndis complant, in which case, it won't work at all.

It does have a long history of being useful though. A long time ago, I used it with a Windows software modem.
Then 56kFLEX came along and I got a real serial port modem.

Intel support is usually pretty good in Linux, so I'm surprised you are having problems.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.