Ambicom Wl54-cf, Help with this 802.11g card Options

[Da_Blitz]

ok so here is a better guid on how to do it, note this is a guide and a rough one at that, i expect you can do it on your own or report back for slight modifcations also this is how i would do it, i am sure there are better ways and please tell me as i dont like the idea of having to set the CC varible everytime. it also looks long and hard but trust me its not, you may also want to read the thing throgh about 3 times and make sure you understand it all.

first we have to add to your $CC eviromental value, just append " -march=arm5", or " -march=iwmmxt" for the c*k series or " -mcpu=xscale" (recmomended)

next we edit the config.mk file and look for somthing that contains /lib/modules/`uname -r/build and replace it with <path to source>/build, or the better way is to
mkdir /lib/modules/2.4.20-zaurus
ln -s <path to src> /lib/modules/2.4.20-zaurus/build
you will also have to hardcode all values of `uname -r` and change it to 2.4.20-zaurus or else it will install the module for your computer and not put it where we want.

now we do a "make driver" and then "make install" which may or may not complain and cause wierd problems scince it does a depmod, you can get around this if you can work out the name of the file it creates and where it installs it to (might be in that config file but deffinatly ends in *.ko)

then its a simple matter of coping the file to your zaurus and placing it in the right subfolder of /lib/modules/<whatever directory is in here>/<wherever (mabey acx110)> and run a depmod. now all we have to do is figure how to make the pcamcia stuff load the driver on insertion which is not my area so you need to find someone who has had a wifi card that needed a bit of text editing to get working and adapt what they did to load your driver (make sure you keep note of the name)

[teleute]

ok so here is a better guid on how to do it, note this is a guide and a rough one at that, i expect you can do it on your own or report back for slight modifcations also this is how i would do it, i am sure there are better ways and please tell me as i dont like the idea of having to set the CC varible everytime. it also looks long and hard but trust me its not, you may also want to read the thing throgh about 3 times and make sure you understand it all.

Awesome...thanks so much. (Sorry I didn't respond sooner, BTW - I didn't get a notification this was here, for some reason.) Anyway, I'll give this a try as soon as I can, hopefully later this week. And BTW, I got it on tigerdirect.ca, but it seems to no longer be offered by them. I've written them to find out why...

[speculatrix]

any joy?

[teleute]

any joy?

Between moving into a new house and the extended business trip I'm currently on, there just hasn't been time to play with this at all. :-( I'll certainly update when I get a chance to try it.

[Lurker]

The Ambicom WL54-CF uses a Marvell chipset, not TI. See the FCC listing for internal photos.

[teleute]

The Ambicom WL54-CF uses a Marvell chipset, not TI. See the FCC listing for internal photos.

Dammit!! None of the docs I had said anything, and their site didn't say anything, so I called tech support and TI is what they told me. Grrr.....I'll call them back and see what the hell is going on.

[Lurker]

Sorry to bring you more bad news, but after a bit of Googling it appears that there are no open source drivers for the Marvell chips. This is made even more apparent by the existence of Linux wrappers for Windows NDIS drivers

I did find this entry in somone's blog, though, so maybe there is hope for the WL54-CF.

[teleute]

Sorry to bring you more bad news, but after a bit of Googling it appears that there are no open source drivers for the Marvell chips. This is made even more apparent by the existence of Linux wrappers for Windows NDIS drivers   

I did find this entry in somone's blog, though, so maybe there is hope for the WL54-CF.

Grrr...if I could ever get ahold of someone at Ambicom, I'd give them a piece of my mind. Anyway, thanks again for the info and the link - I'll keep an eye on the blog and see what he comes up with.

[Vesperatus]

How sad ! I should have googled more before buying TWO WL54-CF card from Ambicon myself for those old Zaurus we have here.

I did a few research myself since i'm a totally new when it comes to configuring drivers/cards for linux.
At first, I would enter the card in the Zaurus and I would'nt have any card detected. So I added the entry to the wlan-ng.conf file. Now, when I insert the card in it, it's detected has a "prism2_cs" type card since i didn't knew it was a Marvell type.

My entry looks like that btw :

card "Ambicom WL54-CF 54Mbps 802.11g WLAN Card"
manfid 0x02df, 0x8103
bind "prism2_cs"

I was kinda disapointed to see that no one managed to make that thing work on linux.
However, I cam across this : http://verens.com/archives/2005/02/21/inst...ipset-in-linux/

I'm looking into NdisWrapper right now and see if I can compile it and install it on my zaurus ( if you have any guidelines for that, I would appreciate naturally).

Other question is about the wlan-ng.conf file. I'll obviously have to add a new entry for the Marvell driver types.

Any clues on that too ?

Back to my NdisWrapper thing. Hope someone can help me and that Teleute didn't abandonned the idea of making the card work on the Zaurus.

*edit*
Ho noes .....
http://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=16420
Still trying to find something however.
*/edit*

This post has been edited by Vesperatus: Dec 20 2005, 06:21 AM

[speculatrix]

ndis wrappers work by taking a Windows driver (for x86 architecture) - which is a DLL, and wrapping it in a linux driver, so that linux can use it.

whilst you might be able to get ndiswrapper to work on zaurus, the windows DLL driver ain't gonna work 'cos it's not an arm binary, nor is the Z hardware anything like an X86 to allow a binary runtime translation layer (like qemu or bochs) to do anything.

what we need is wrapper for WinCE drivers from pocket pc since pocket pcs are pretty much all arm based. or even a palmOs wrapper.

[Da_Blitz]

I am supprised at how many manufacturers tout "linux compatability" wehn they realse the devices, they say it more often and louder than for the windows couterparts however when it comes down to getting these mythical drivers the manufactere dosent want to know you unless you are buying 100k+ chips

[Da_Blitz]

<rant>
I am supprised at how many manufacturers tout "linux compatability" wehn they realse the devices, they say it more often and louder than for the windows couterparts however when it comes down to getting these mythical drivers the manufactere dosent want to know you unless you are buying 100k+ chips

and if you do get the drivers then its for a specific kernel version that is known to be buggy which is made worse by thier incoplete drivers that require a sacrifice every blue moon to get the thing running

why cant they release the specs and get someone to do the hard work for them for free and get it done properly, then turn around and reimbersee the pearson for thier time scince they delivered a faster more relibale driver in less time than someone who has never even heard of linux but was given the job of writing the driver

</rant>

[Vesperatus]

well, actually, the WL54-CF comes with 2 types of installation driver...

ppc2003 AND Windows.
If i look at the user manual, it looks like I have to install those "drivers" on the PDA itsefl if I have a WinCe based pda.

So I guess we actually have some drivers that are Arm based. I'll investigate this but I see some hope and a nice project for the holidays perhaps

[speculatrix]

well, actually, the WL54-CF comes with 2 types of installation driver...

ppc2003 AND Windows.
If i look at the user manual, it looks like I have to install those "drivers" on the PDA itsefl if I have a WinCe based pda.

So I guess we actually have some drivers that are Arm based. I'll investigate this but I see some hope and a nice project for the holidays perhaps

the windows x86 drivers will be for when you use a CF to PCMCIA adaptor

winceWrapper would be a really cool project and will earn you lots of kudos and improve your sex life... maybe.

[Da_Blitz]

From what i remeber about wince devices (shudders) the api is effectivly the same with slight modifcations and trimmed down slightly, however i dont thnik anyone knows about how the drivers are done, still an adaptation of the ndis wrapper might be posible.