Mandrake Wireless at 22Mbps!

[Jonathan Hutchins]

I wanted to share what I've found configuring this SMC 2435W under Mandrake 
9.1. 
 
Like aparantly all 22Mbps cards, this uses the TI ACX100 chipset, for which no 
drivers are currently available.  It seems that DLink did release some 
binary-only drivers at various times, but they are not officially available 
either.  
 
Ivor Hewitt has posted a set of binary drivers complied for various releases, 
including Mandrake 9.1, at http://www.ivor.it/wireless/acx.html. 
 
My procedure so far: Standard Mandrake 9.1 install.  Add all pacages relevant 
to PCMCIA and Wireless (wireless-tools).  Download and expand the drivers 
(acx100_bin_20030503.tgz).  For a PCMCIA card, run installACX100_cs (other 
alternative is for PCI). 
 
At this point the card should detect on boot and load the acx100sta.o driver.  
It will not configure correctly, or according to any Wireless HOWTO I've 
found, although it can be manipulated with iwconfig.   
 
When Mandrake finds and activates this card, it will create a file 
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 (exact number depends on your 
system, but starts at 1).  This will default to: 
  
DEVICE=eth1 
BOOTPROTO=dhcp 
ONBOOT=yes 
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes 
NEEDHOSTNAME=yes 
 
I have found that by adding iwconfig keywords and values to this file, the 
card will configure itself correctly when HOTPLUGGED.  It will not pull the 
values at boot. 
 
WARNING: Anything other than a completely smooth removal of this card will 
lock/crash your system with a non-synced disk, you will have file system 
errors on restart. 
 
My best protocol so far is: 
 
ifconfig eth1 down 
cardctl suspend 0 
cardctl eject 0 
cardctl insert 0 
(Or pull and re-insert the card). 
 
Alternatively, boot the system before inserting the card. 
 
This should cause your card to reconfigure using the values appended to the 
file above, and for me at least, to successfully connect at 22Mbps using 256 
bit WEP and power management. 
 
Be warned that if you wander out of signal range, you may find that there is 
no way to shut the card down without destabilising your system. 
 
Good luck; I'll post more as I figure out how to get this to happen at boot. 
 
 
 

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