Wireless Card on Compaq Evo n800c

Tachyon · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2002 Posts: 16

I am attempting to get my wireless card to work on my compaq Evo n800c. it is a usb based wireless card, i think the compaq model for it is w200. i have been told it is orinocco bases and i have seen drivers online for orinoccos usb cards. however being a relative newbie i am completely clueless as to how to compile and install the driver, and then get config files set up correctly to use this. if anyone has any useful information or instructions that would be great.

thanks
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jay · l33t Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 980

Check the Tips&Tricks section for some good advices on wireless cards.
From my point og view you'll nedd the usb-hotplug package, the pcmcia-cs package and the orinoco drivers installed.
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mellofone · Apprentice Joined: 13 Apr 2002 Posts: 287

I just got the same card. Have you had any results making it work?
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dj_choco · Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:22 am Post subject: w200 - USB

melted_stencil · n00b Joined: 26 Apr 2003 Posts: 18 Location: Hoboken

I got the w200 working in gentoo using the newest orinoco drivers on my n800c(I'm typing this right now from class). Soon as I get back to my desktop I'll throw up a link.

Everything works as far as I can see, including Fn+F2. And you don't need pcmcia, at least I didn't, just using the _usb sources worked for me.

*Edit* http://ranty.pantax.net/~rrey/orinoco-usb/orinoco-usb-0.3.0-rrey4.tar.bz2 may work for you, I'm not sure if these are th exact ones I used but give it a shot

mellofone · Apprentice Joined: 13 Apr 2002 Posts: 287

I have everything working but the Fn+F2. Any ideas what I could be missing?

Not that I ever actually need it

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melted_stencil · n00b Joined: 26 Apr 2003 Posts: 18 Location: Hoboken

My FN+F2 worked right out of the box actually. You may need to emerge hotplug if you don't have it, dmesg shows my system recognizing FN+F2 as a request to load up the wireless card and it uses the appropriate hotplug scripts

Hope that helps, Good luck

mellofone · Apprentice Joined: 13 Apr 2002 Posts: 287

That's probably it. I am not using hotplug... Thanks.
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root66 · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 30

Hi guys!

has anyone made experience getting the W200 running with a kernel 2.6?

I've stumbled over this site:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~agriffis/N620c/

The instructions on this site are really helpful, but somehow the downloaded driver seems to be incompatible with the current 2.6.0 vanilla kernel... the modules are named .o, and not .ko like it is with 2.6

I also have a n800c, great thing - with kernel 2.6 almost everything works fine now including ACPI. The only thing i didn't manage to get running ( despite the W200 ) is suspend-to-RAM, but we'll see.... For anyone who doesn't know so far, a full 1400x1050 resolution console can be achieved with vga=834 ( with VESA fb enabled ).

I would be glad for any helpful comments. 8-)

melted_stencil · n00b Joined: 26 Apr 2003 Posts: 18 Location: Hoboken

I'm actually reinstalling with the gentoo-development 2.6.0-r2 kernel right now. Soon as I get home, I'll give it a shot. I remember seeing people getting it working and there was definitly stuff on teh orinoco mailing list so your best bet would be to check that first.

I'll post back as soon as I get home (at work now doing tech support :roll:

)

root66 · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 30

Hi again,

i got the "orinoco-usb-0.3.0-rrey4" drivers "working"... The instructions at the site i mentioned before are not quite applicative to make a shell script from...
The drivers are loaded by the kernel automagically at boot-time, wow! although i didn't tell them to do so...

The only tiny problem is now....I have no wlan0 device

The Fn+F2 function key is working, though... i can see switching the LED on/off at the device

hmmm.....

I get some strange boot messages from dmesg:

root66 · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 30

me again,
finally I'm giving up for today - it's very late now. Here's what i experienced for now:

1.) The driver gets correctly compiled and the firmware gets successfully downloaded from the device.

root66 · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 30

Finally got it working!

On the Orinoco-USB homepage it is stated:

invis-eo · n00b Joined: 12 Jun 2003 Posts: 72

Hi

I've also a w200 wlan-card and it doesnt work. I've compiled my 2.6.0 kernel with the .config file from the link above and installed de orinoco-usb drivers correctly i think. But i have anymore no light on the led and i have no wlan0 or somthing else device.

Can someone give me a tip what i can do? how can i find out if the fn + f2 works?

thanks for your reply and sorry for my english!

root66 · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 30

Hi invis!

You shouldn't directly use the .config link from above, because it's made for a special notebook, a evo n620c.

:?:

Are you familiar with configuring your kernel?
If not, take a look here:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-kernel.xml

For the W200 Card you need your kernel configured for USB and WLAN support.
There's no need to select any kernel drivers for WLAN cards unless you have a different card you also wish to configure.

If this works, grab the latest CVS snapshot of the orinoco driver from this site:

:arrow:

http://savannah.nongnu.org/cvs/?group=orinoco

Compile the driver and copy the resulting .ko files into your kernels driver directory for wireless cards, something like:

invis-eo · n00b Joined: 12 Jun 2003 Posts: 72

thanks a lot for your great posting

now my wlan-led is shining. thanks a lot. I'll try to connect it later when im at home :-)

thanks a lot!

/ i edited this posting because i had a kernel error with the usb, which i dont have seen. now it works fine. i havent installed ohci, only uhci...!

root66 · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 30

invis-eo · n00b Joined: 12 Jun 2003 Posts: 72

i tought that you have the same problem. therefore i posted it!

im sorry, i cant give you a resumee of my experiences. I'm not at home, im in my flat share (in der wohngemeinschaft) where we have no wlan. But it worked for about a half a year with the old 2.4.22 kernel and it worked fine! I can give you answers earliest on the weekend when im at home so i hope that i can use kismet and all this tools mit my w200 but i dont know it yet!

But im happy that it works!!!

Halcy0n · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 2:16 am Post subject:

I tried both drivers provided on this page, but neither of them work for me. I saw a couple other instances of my problem online with my exact laptop. I have the Compaq Evo N800c. Whenever I hit Fn-F2, I get the following error message in dmesg:

root66 · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 30

Hi!

I don't think that this has something do to with the driver itself. The CVS version worked flawlessly with me. I expect it rather to be a kernel configuration problem...

Which kernel are you using?

Can you post more detailed information ( dmesg, kernel log )?

Halcy0n · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 2:56 pm Post subject:

http://www.halcy0n.com/temp/.config
There is the config I used, but I also enabled wlan after I put that file up. That is the only change that I know I made. I don't have access to my laptop currently, so I can't give you exact dmesg output.
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Halcy0n · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:35 pm Post subject:

Could someone that has it working possibly put their kernel config up. I'm about to try and write a hack so that the card will work, but I'd much rather not have my system crash many times while trying to do that

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root66 · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 30

As far as I can see by now, you do not have enabled the following options in your kernel which is obviously required:

Halcy0n · Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2004 1:34 am Post subject:

I stated in my post that I compiled in WLAN support, that it was the only difference between my current config and that one. I also know how to compile a kernel, that is not an issue. I know the differences between modules and compiling it into the kernel itself. I like a monolithic kernel. I try to keep the number of modules I have to a minimum, as well as the number of things I compile for my kernel at all. Having UHCI compiled in or not is not an issue, I've tried it every way possible, and as I stated before, I compiled WLAN support in.

Can someone post their config so I can see possible clues to my mistake? I'm beginning to believe that this is an issue with the card itself, and that you have newer firmware on your wireless card, since the error message is showing my card violates the USB standard, which is not a kernel issue, unless the checks can be removed and it allows the use of the "broken" interface.
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root66 · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 30

first, sorry if I may have got you wrong - i did'nt read your first posting "carefully" enough.

If you presume that it could be a old firmware, you may be right. I thought I read somwhere that it could be flashed or may be used another. When I got the " orinoco-usb-0.3.0-rrey4" drivers right, it downloaded the firmware and saved it somewhere on the disk...

But there's another possibility, there exist two versions of the "w200". A "old" one, which is quite flat, and a new one which looks quite humby... The old one has a prism2 chipset and the new one a orinoco-usb interface. I also read somewhere, that they shipped a few "new" ones with the prism2 chipset... I'm not a expert with these cards, but maybe that's a hint.

What does your lsusb and dmesg say?