Date: 8/7/05

This article borrows heavily from my article NdiswrapperPuppy. Please refer to that page for more detailed instructions on using ndiswrapper with Puppy.

Problems

Process 1 - with base Puppy 1.0.4

I have a Thinkpad that uses the Trident Cyberblade Aladdin i1 chipset, which works fine with Puppy 1.0.4. My other laptop, a CTX, uses the NeoMagic chipset for video. This section will discuss using Puppy wireless on a pcmcia wireless card where vesa is supported for you video card.

Puppy does not come with the drivers or base installation of ndiswrapper to run wireless. Essentially, one can follow the directions on my page for older versions, located at the wiki page NdiswrapperPuppy. The difference now is that we will be using a pcmcia wireless card for the installation.

In this case, we are using the net5211 Windows drivers that you can get off the D-Link website. They are in zip format and uncompress into a setup.exe file and a directory with your base wireless drivers, which are easily copied to where you ant them.

Assure that you have the following files in a convenient location in Puppy;

net5211.inf
ar5211.sys

Initial Steps:

1. install the perl package, which can be found here∞
2. install the ndiswrapper package, which can be found here∞

3. make sure that the ndsiwrapper executable was in the /usr/bin directory
4. make sure that the loadndisdriver executable was in the /sbin directory.

Now it's time to install the ndiswrapper modules. In my case. I placed the base windows drivers in /root/my-applications. So do;

ndiswrapper -i /root/my-applications/net5211.inf

Puppy should pick up your inserted pcmcia device automatically. To check the manufacturer's ID of the card, run;

cardctl info in RXVT. Mine returned the value;

MANFID = 0271,0012

Now make ndiswrapper use the pcmcia device with the -d command manufacturer's id;

ndiswrapper -d 0271:0012 net5211

ndiswrapper -m # This step was recommended, but did not work for me. We will try something else later on. Now do;

modprobe ndiswrapper

You can check dmesg and should see at the bottom of the display output that ndiswrapper has loaded and wlan0 is ready.

Now follow my previous instructions for setting the wireless values;

iwconfig wlan0 key open xxxxxxxxxx channel 6 essid default

Of course, your essid, WEP values and channel should match your system.

Don't worry about getting an error message about setting the frequency.

Next, you need to tell Puppy to start the network using the wireless card. Puppy uses dhcpcd, so the command line usage is;

dhcpcd wlan0

The link indicators on the DWL-G650 should be blinking together,showing a valid connection. Start Mozilla and see if you get the Puppy Home Page.

Making the process automatic at boot

Puppy has a file, /etc/rc.d/rc.local that can be used to automatically load ndiswrapper and bring up your wlan0 interface. Using Rox, migrate to the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file, right click and choose open as text.You can now add your commands to be started at boot time. Mine were as follows;

modprobe ndiswrapper
iwconfig wlan0 key open xxxxxxxxxx channel 6 essid default
dhcpcd wlan0

Of course, substitute xxxxxxxxxx with your WEP values. Save the file and your done!

NOTE: If you make a mistake with the added values in /etc/rc.d/rc.local, Puppy may hang on boot. So, make sure your syntax and values are correct before editing this file.