Need help with a Zyxel M-102 PCMCIA WiFi

[vyraen]

Hello all,

I have just installed the latest 1.4 release of PC-BSD on this laptop, and even though my wireless isn't up and running yet, I am really enjoying the release so far. I have a Zyxel M-102 PCMCIA card which is using the Atheros AR5005VL chipset.

PC-BSD doesn't seem to recognize this device by default, and I am wondering what I have to do in order to get this to show up and become usable.

I am new to the FreeBSD world.

Thanks in advance!

[vyraen]

I've tried enabling if_ath_load, but it doesn't seem to change anything for me.

My laptop is unusable without WiFi!

[vyraen]

Now I have also tried ndisgen, but it just errors out on the inf file. Lots of views here, anyone have some help? I'd like to keep PCBSD, but if my wireless won't work, I'll have to move on to another OS where it will.

[rayden5]

I cann't help just as i'm never toutched with wireless, but i can give you some direction try to check the freebsd handbook as pcbsd runs freebsd under the hood, maybe you can check it...

kind regards rayden...

[vyraen]

I cann't help just as i'm never toutched with wireless, but i can give you some direction try to check the freebsd handbook as pcbsd runs freebsd under the hood, maybe you can check it...

kind regards rayden...

Thank you for the tip, I have followed the instructions in the FreeBSD handbook but am having no luck with it. The device never lights up when FreeBSD boots and I can't find it in the KDE network configuration.

I think I'm out of options now.

[rayden5]

try to check dmesg to see if it have detected it is detected! i'm guessing that it's not been detected due to some module not being loaded at loader.conf!!!

if you can put your dmesg online on a file or here!!!

[Oko]

Hello all,

I have just installed the latest 1.4 release of PC-BSD on this laptop, and even though my wireless isn't up and running yet, I am really enjoying the release so far. I have a Zyxel M-102 PCMCIA card which is using the Atheros AR5005VL chipset.

PC-BSD doesn't seem to recognize this device by default, and I am wondering what I have to do in order to get this to show up and become usable.

I am new to the FreeBSD world.

Thanks in advance!

Did you check hardware notes if your chip-set is supported

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.2R/hardware-i386.html

Do you have pcmcia_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf

Read carefully documentation and make sure you did not skip a single step.

You may also ask someone else with FreeBSD to try to ndis Windowzzz driver for you as for some reason some systems are more successfully with ndis than the others. I saw that your ndis failed.

Try posting on questions@freebsd.org to see if serious people can give you any input on the specific chipset. Do the homework and post dmes, ifconfig and similar things as you will increase your chances that serious person will take a look.

You may try FreeBSD 7.0 current to see if your card is detected since the drivers are constantly added to a kernel.

[vyraen]

Originally Posted by vyraen

Hello all, I have just installed the latest 1.4 release of PC-BSD on this laptop, and even though my wireless isn't up and running yet, I am really enjoying the release so far. I have a Zyxel M-102 PCMCIA card which is using the Atheros AR5005VL chipset. PC-BSD doesn't seem to recognize this device by default, and I am wondering what I have to do in order to get this to show up and become usable. I am new to the FreeBSD world. Thanks in advance!

Did you check hardware notes if your chip-set is supported

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.2R/hardware-i386.html

Do you have pcmcia_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf

Read carefully documentation and make sure you did not skip a single step.

You may also ask someone else with FreeBSD to try to ndis Windowzzz driver for you as for some reason some systems are more successfully with ndis than the others. I saw that your ndis failed.

Try posting on questions@freebsd.org to see if serious people can give you any input on the specific chipset. Do the homework and post dmes, ifconfig and similar things as you will increase your chances that serious person will take a look.

You may try FreeBSD 7.0 current to see if your card is detected since the drivers are constantly added to a kernel.

Thank you for that link, Oko. I guess my only option is to see if ndis works on another computer, because in your link there is a note that says:

The ath(4) driver supports all Atheros Cardbus or PCI cards, except those that are based on the AR5005VL chipset.

This is actually pretty hilarious, because of course I have the only Atheros card that is not supported. Sigh.