How do I enable 802.11b in my kernel?
If you have a Belkin F5D6020 ver.2, see the Atmel Wireless Device FAQ.
If you have a PXA based board, the Hermes (Orinoco) driver is already enabled by default. This driver is compatible with many wireless cards that use a Prism II chip set (e.g. the Belkin F5D6020 ver.1).
To enable the 802.11b wireless drivers in other Linux kernels, start with the latest source tree.
Change directories to the linux directory where you installed the source tree.
cd linux
If you haven't already built the kernel, issue one of the following commands:
make graphicsclient_config (for a GraphicsClient Plus)
make graphicsmaster_config (for the GraphicsMaster)
make adsbitsy_config (for the Bitsy)
make adsbitsyplus_config (for a Bitsy Plus)
make adsagc_config (for the Advanced GraphicsClient)
Now enable the drivers. Use make menuconfig to change the kernel configuration:
make menuconfig
From the main menu, go into Network Device Support.
From there, go into Wireless LAN. Enable Wireless LAN at the top. Under the heading Wireless PCMCIA card support, enable Hermes (orinoco) or Cisco/Aironet.
On 2.4.9 kernels, you may also need to go to Network Device Support and then into PCMCIA network device support to enable PCMCIA wireless LAN and WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11 wireless support.
Note: The ads patches for 2.4.9 cause the wvlan drivers to be used. This may differ from other Linux 2.4.9 distributions. We've successfully tested this with Cisco Aironet 340 and ORiNOCO (Lucent) cards. Not all 802.11 cards work! It highly recommended that you use ORiNOCO or Aironet 340 cards, especially when using a 2.4.9 kernel.
Finish building the kernel by issuing these commands:
make dep
make zImage
You'll find the compressed kernel zImage file in the linux/arch/arm/boot directory (e.g. ls arch/arm/boot).
You may need to edit files under /etc/pcmcia in your root file system to get your card to work. If you are using a ramdisk root file system, you will have to update the ramdisk image to make the changes permanent.
If you are booting from a flash card, you can remove the flash card and insert your wireless card after your board boots.
Hardware tip: Some wireless cards require removal of the +12 V from the PCMCIA slot. This is accomplished by either removing the +12 V input power to the board (which also removes the backlight power) or by removing a transistor from the board.
31-Dec-2003: jlackey
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Posted - 06 May 2002 : 12:56:17
