Strange ESSID setting behavior

[Quasimojo]

I have an old Compaq Armada 1750 laptop that I'm trying to get up and running with a minimal Gentoo install. I'm using the 2006.1 minimal install CD, and my NIC is a PCMCIA wireless Airlink with a Texas Instruments (I think) ACX111 chipset.

When I set my ESSID, be it through iwconfig or net-setup, I attempt to set it to an eight-character name that ends with an "E" (let's call it "YARDSALE"). In both cases, when I try this, it drops that eighth character, leaving me with "YARDSAL". I tried preceeding that eighth character with a "/" (looking for an escape character), and it dropped the "E" and accepted the "/" ("YARDSAL/"). The only way I could get it to set correctly was by specifying "YARDSALEE", in which case it dropped the last character, leaving me with "YARDSALE", as desired.

Anyone have any idea why it would behave this way?

[mjf55]

Doing a Google search yielded many hit on your symptoms. Several on your card type and even in this gentoo forum. try these links:
on google my search was:linux essid loses character
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=148035
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=477787

I think these address your problem. Good luck
_________________
Mark
No longer a n00b, but still a 'Kool Kid' wannabe

[Quasimojo]

I found a link in one of those posts that does directly address my question. I also found some in-depth info on setting up this obscure PCMCIA NIC. Thanks for the help.