Yesterday i got a private email from Achim J. Latz
who already got it working without modifications....

>Managed to get it working, using the latest nightlies for

> * rt2x00 (the *new* driver that includes the rt73usb) and
> * hostap

>I compiled both of them on a vanilla 2.6.20 kernel (based on >the Ubuntu
>7.04 .config files), and everything seems to work (at least in >Master mode).

The rt2x00 plain driver supports rt73?

(this? http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/rt2x00-cvs-daily.tar.gz)

Or we still use the rt73 driver?

(this? http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz)

(all from here http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Downloads )

>The rt2x00 plain driver supports rt73?

yes, it does!

I've compiled it, I'm testing it :D

It seems a b****rd to actually configure anything in Linux. I am used to Windows, where I click the SSID icon in Intel PROSet and it asks for a key after detecting the best security. After that I am connected.

There is too much ifconfig/iwconfig/iwpriv stuff going on in here :(

that's why they made "network-manager" ;-)

http://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager/

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/network-manager

My Efika has no graphics card, and I'm not installing X, so GNOME tools aren't really helpful.

It looks like, after a lot of poking around and cross-referencing contradicting documentation in rt2x00, Debian and Ubuntu forums and mailing lists, I am now having this problem since I am running 2.6.20.7:

http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/phpBB2/v ... php?t=3553

Which basically means they've spent a couple of months breaking their code and not fixing it. Sigh. This stick was a real waste of money.

Next Efika had better have wireless on board.

Okay I got it working with a patch from a helpful guy on the rt2x00 forums.

http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/phpBB2/v ... php?t=3669

This patch, applied to the CVS daily, seems to work on Debian with a 2.6.20.7 kernel, a few errors in the kernel logs, but nothing to worry about. I am pulling patches from apt at 260k/s which is as good as it needs to be. Not done any clever testing with it yet.

Tested the latest ralink sources and patches on my Pegasos with Gentoo, using a self compiled 2.6.20.2 kernel, and it works fine. Also tested on openSUSE 10.2, compiling using standard, out of box kernel and kernel sources (2.6.18.2-34-default), and it was up and running in no time, thanks to easy YaST configuration.

Also wanted to test on openSUSE 10.3-factory, but kernel sources are broken, so the wlan driver can't be compiled either...

Summary: I don't have to give away my USB wlan stick :-)

Wanted to test with kernel v2.6.21, but it fails to compile. And that's right, the rt2x00 forum says, that it works for kernels v2.6.17 to v2.6.20. No luck with openSUSE factory, which has 2.6.21 already...

Achim J. Latz emailed me, that he made a HOWTO.
It's very excellent! :

http://www.latz.cc/embedded/rt2x00.shtml

Marcel, can you prepare that for the EFIKA/Open Client and we will set-up a page here on PowerDeveloper. :-D

R&B :)

Linux drivers for the ZD1211 chipset have been handed over to the community earlier this year (they are GPL now), available at

http://zd1211.wiki.sourceforge.net/

And for what it's worth (maybe of help with possible little/big endianness problems), Mac OS drivers (supporting PPC hardware, I presume) can be found here:

ftp://ftp.zyxeltech.de/ZyDAS/ZD1211_USB/Macintosh/

(I don't know about the licence here, as release notes are in .doc format :-(

Since the ZD1211 chipsets are now owned by Atheros, it may be also useful to know that
"... being acquired by Atheros, the chipset was renamed to AR5007UG. The original drivers support the new hardware."

Lists of USB WLAN devices based on the ZD1211 chipset can be found here:

http://zydas.rapla.net/

and here:

http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/users/D ... rw/devices

Best regards,

Walter.

I assume these aren't "stable" with the new Devicescape stack yet?

I'm actually poking around with the rt2x00 drivers at the moment, with 2.6.22 around the corner, the drivers should compile with a standard kernel (hooray, no more tracking wireless-dev!). I have an interest in this because my Efika only has the wireless stick as network access, I am running low on 45m network cables.

I bought now a Planet USB wifi (wl-u356) based on the zd1211 chip, and it works out of the box with openSUSE on EFIKA. No kernel patching / compiling, firmware is available as package. The only problem I encountered, that YaST is messed up, meaning it creates a config for 'open' non-encrypted networks. But it takes 2-3 minutes to put together a working wpa_supplicant configuration file from the documentation and a bugreport is already filed :)

If anyone followed my 'EFIKA is for me' thread, it's easy to guess, where I'm using it: I don't need a 15m cable to my HiFi any more :-) The zd1211rw driver does not support to be an access point (AP), but there exist another driver, which does. Of course, that needs manual driver compilation, but if it works, it's worth the trouble, the result is a Linux based AP instead of an off-the-shelf, which has limited functionality.

We should make a diagram and a How-To of that set up. Do we have an EFIKA Project for this?

R&B :)