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On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> I tried googling about the netgear ma401ra and locking up, and I
> turned up one post where someone had tried different IRQs. So I put
> this in /etc/pcmcia/config;
>
> exclude irq 1
> exclude irq 2
> exclude irq 3
> exclude irq 4
> exclude irq 5
> exclude irq 6
> exclude irq 8
> exclude irq 9
> exclude irq 10
> exclude irq 11
> exclude irq 12
> exclude irq 13
> exclude irq 14
> exclude irq 15
>
> I made sure in the BIOS that the parallel port is on IRQ 5 and the
> soundcard on IRQ 9 in an attempt to force PCMCIA to be on IRQ 7. But
> it didn't make any difference. It's detected but if I try to configure
> it, it seems to either just lock up or crash.
>
> ljones


I got over 5000 hits on ma401ra with google/linux

Is it possible your card requires prism2 rather than orinoco?
Several people with your RA model think they need prism2, even though it 
is supposed to be the non-RA model which uses that.  The company labelled 
them all without the RA.

Can you borrow some other wireless non-cardbus card and see if it works 
for you?  Can you use this one with BL in another laptop computer?  You 
can put the drivers on disk2 and insert them from there after editing 
config, if you use the 2-floppy version of BL3.50.

Someone else had all sorts of problems in one particular laptop with all 
the wireless pcmcia cards tested.  (Compaq Armada M700).
Maybe your computer is too old to do wireless?

What do you do after you:
boot
insert card
/etc/pcmcia/start


I would then:
ifconfig up
udhcpc  (if this works you have succeeded)

or:
ifconfig eth0 192.168.2.5 (if router is in this series).
and ping the router to see if things work.

You could try to boot a DamnSmallLinux live CD from DOS using loadlin 
after copying the kernel (vmlinuz or whatever they call it, look in /boot 
or search for it) to your baslin directory, and see if DSL can handle your 
card.  If it does not have your definition in /etc/pcmcia/config you can 
add it.  DSL will run better for you in 32MB without the gui
boot: dsl 2                             (for runlevel 2, no gui)

Reboot to DOS and

cd /baslin
loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/hdc1 ro

Sindi