Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

> > > I will try sometime. In the meantime, can you try ndiswrapper?
> >
> > Have you managed to compile it?
>
> No, I have not tried ndiswrapper with 2.4.

Instead of ndiswrapper I kept looking for the actual rtl8180 module, which 
realtek used to provide but their links are all not working for me.

We had the software on CD for the Linksys wireless card for Win98 and it 
installed but we were unable to get a connection at the public library. 
Maybe it needs 98FE?  Someone else at the same table was connected. 
There was no signal strength indicated on our screen.

The neighbor tried to help by lending us a Netgear card, which turns out 
to need the same RTL8180 driver for linux, which I downloaded from 
driverguide for Kernel 2.2.20 and gcc 2.3.X but it would not compile for 
me with the SW91 glibc and gcc (2.3.2).  There is also a version for 
2.2.18 kernel and gcc 2.95.6 which also did not compile. I don't think you 
can compile kernel modules with uclibc.  Some day I will install SW10.2 to 
try compiling this module with.

I downloaded from Netgear the 2.8MB Win98 driver, which would not fit onto 
a floppy disk, and we managed to transfer it to the Win98 laptop via USB 
memory stick, booting it with David's 1-floppy USB linux, second edition. 
We had to disable Large Disk Access every time in order to boot to linux, 
and put it back for DOS/Windows, as instructed by the bios.

Win98FE does not seem to support USB storage devices.  We could also have 
used a DOS boot disk with that USB memory stick.

The third (last) edition boots on the desktop computers but not on the 
laptop.  I even made a copy to another floppy disk.  The unzip on second 
edition did not work on that file (winzip did), though the busybox unzip I 
compiled (1.1.10) did work.

Win98 said it could not install the Realtek drivers for the Netgear card, 
it was missing some files.

DSL live CD found the Linksys wireless card as 'unknown card in 
Socket 0' and the Netgear card semi-crashed cardmgr (I could exit with 
Ctrl-C) giving some message about memory_cs.  They both light up.

The Linksys card worked in linux for James on his laptop, supposedly with 
DSL, maybe with ndiswrapper?  If that is on the copy he sent us, we don't 
know where to find it and how to use it.

I am hoping David or someone can compile the RTL8180 driver module for 
these two cards for one or more kernels.

We then tried to use our USB memory stick at the library but it did not 
work and the librarian said they are trying to fix USB.  The USB keyboards 
were working.  Unlike some libraries, we are allowed to copy things to 
floppy disk but they don't have parallel or wired ethernet ports.

This Gateway computer is not ideal for linux.  If you set BIOS to 
'extended mode' so that it uses the entire screen for console text, the 
screen gets bleached, which is why it was given to us (it was set to 
extended).  DamnSmallLinux chose some graphics mode by default for X which 
gave a bleached screen with nearly unreadable text on it.  I managed to 
boot it to runlevel2 (text console) and could read the fact that it did 
not identify the wireless cards.  Ubuntu needs three times as much RAM.

We offered our dual Pentium Pro 200MHz computer to a young friend having 
fun with linux and Gentoo. He wonders if it will compile faster than a 
single 200MHz computer.  To compile an SMP 2.6 kernel, does he need to do 
anything besides answer Y or M to SMP instead of N?