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Here is a screengrab of the default KDE 3 desktop showing “Kmail”, the KDE mail client and “everbuddy” an instant messaging client which supports several messaging protocols including msn messenger.

this is my first post via the newly working linux laptop (including network card!)… more later

You can pretty much ignore anything i’ve mentioned previously on this subject apart from the excellent pcmcia article I found, which led me in the right direction. To summarise, you need to know what the machine recognises your card as, then add a simple card description to a config file telling the machine which driver to use. As it turned out I didn’t even need to install a driver.

It was actually a lot easier than I thought:-

1. I logged in as root and looked in var/log/messages to find out what my card was recognised as:-

“PCMCIA Fast-Ethernet”
manfid 0xffff, 0x1090

2. I then looked in etc/pcmcia/config and noticed that there were already several ASIX 88190 based cards in there which were using an already present driver called axnet_cs

3. I added the follwing card desription to etc/pcmcia/config:-

card “PCMCIA Fast-Ethernet”
version “PCMCIA”, “Fast-Ethernet”
manfid 0xffff, 0x1090
bind “axnet_cs”

4. Rebooted, and noted the absence of the “low” beep which I had before which was telling me it couldn’t find a driver.

5. Fired up konquerer and hey presto, I was on the internet. Note that I had already previously configured my internet connection to use PCMCIA and DHCP with my broadband connection

I haven’t installed the driver yet, because i’m waiting for a rainy afternoon (plenty of those) when nothing else is going on (not so many of those). So don’t be misheartened that this project seems to be taking months – I only spend 20 minutes on it now and again – I have a job, house, wife, social life, washing up and a band to look after as well.

I was also holding back because it was bothering me that I don’t know what my card is recognised as and how linux would know to use the driver I intended to install. I then came across this article at linux orbit which has just renewed my enthusiasm, as it explains to me how I can find out what my card is recognised as (if at all). I now also understand that once I know this, I replace the “ASIX” stuff with whatever my card claims to be. It also re-emphasises the need to read the PCMCIA HOW-TO properly before starting.

so I now have a possible driver for my network card. It seems to be a compliation of various versions of files and requires me to install it from the command line. I also need to edit some of the references to directories and probably create some directories.

I also get the feeling that I am about to overwrite some files with earlier versions, so I need to back up.

to give you the idea here is the read me file which comes with driver. Note that this refers to earlier versions of files than I have on my system and it also instructs you to download some files which I already have as they were included in the gz file with the driver.

 AX88190 LINUX DRIVER INSTALL
 Note: this driver for linux 2.2.x

 1. copy driver to /asix
    # mcopy a:/* /asix
 
 2. download pcmcia-cs-3.1.8.tar.gz from hyper.stanford.edu
    read PCMCIA-HOWTO file & install it
 
    # mcopy pcmcia-cs-3.1.8.tar.gz /usr/src/linux
    # tar zxvf pcmcia-cs-3.1.8.tar.gz
    # cd /usr/src/linux/pcmcia-cs-3.1.8
    # make config
    # make all; make install

 3. add the following lines into /etc/pcmcia/config
    card “ASIX AX88190 Based Fast Ethernet PCMCIA Card”
    version “ASIX”, “AX88190”
    bind “pcnet_cs”

    * ASIX: Manufacture ID in CIS
    * AX88190: Product ID in CIS

 4. you can copy pcnet_cs.c from /usr/src/pcmcia-cs-3.1.8/clients/ to /
 
 5. please check pcnet_cs.c has the following lines:
    static hw_info_t hw_info[]={
                .
                .
     { /* ASIX AX88190 */ 0x0400, 0x88, 0x19, 0x00, 0 },
                .
                .
     }
  
     PS.0x0400 : The Node Address location
        0x88, 0x19, 0x00 : Node Address

 6.# cd /asix
   # chmod +x gen1 gen2
  
 7.# gen1
   # gen2
 
 8.# reboot

I am also still not sure whether any of the settings like “Node Address Location” will need manually editing or not.

As you can see I have no confidence whatsoever that what I am about to do will work or not!

Despite what you read below it is actually today that this log went live – the rest just went live on my development server. Hence all that was written before had a readership of one, and as I show blatant favouritism for my own work, I didn’t criticise myself even once. Ignorance is bliss eh?

I guess that will change now….

A colleague had the version 8.0 disks so I thought I would upgrade. Because I hadn’t made many changes to the original install, I decided to completely overwrite that installation. First attempt I chose the wrong mouse driver (for the internal pad thing) and monitor settings – it was a mess. I logged into KDE and the cursor kept disappearing down to the bottom left of the screen. It also opened up everything it passed over. Thus I couldn’t get to anything to change the settings so I copped out and started the  whole installation from scratch, this time taking care to choose the correct mouse driver (for my logitech USB external mouse).

Now I have sound too! This is great, but obviously I haven’t learnt much in the process. Oh well, theres still the PCMCIA network card and modem to go – apparently the winmodem is a pig to get working under linux.

having trouble getting the ethernet card working… mentor PCMLAN10/100

 

I have found some info here on mobilix, apparently the card uses a AX88190 chipset which has led me to a possible driver here on asix.com

ok, I just lost a massive entry I had to put here because of a bug/annoyance with the blogger I am building and using to write this log. I can’t be bothered to write it out in proper detail now, so here is a summary:-

I have three operating systems on the machine, win98, win2k and now suse Linux. After the succesful linux install I found I couldnt boot into win2k because the partition reference in boot.ini (in the root of the c drive was wrong, so I manually edited it and I can now boot into win2k.

I’ll write a bit more about how the boot process works with this set up later!

I bought this laptop a couple of years ago from Time Computers (UK). At the time as far as features went it was the best spec for the money. My old desktop PC was very under spec and limping and I needed something for web development with would run at 1024 x 768 resolution, and something I could drag between home and work (hence shelling out for a laptop) and this was the only affordable* option at that time. The advertised spec was:-

Pentium III (mobile) 600MHZ
128 MB RAM
12 GB Hard drive
15″ TFT monitor 1024 x 768

When I first got it I discovered it had a Celeron in instead of a Pentium, and after much phone calls and arguing with clueless call centre staff  “we wont change it because a Celeron is exactly the same as a Pentium ” (!!) they agreed to take it back and change the chip. They helpfully did a nice fresh install of Windows 98 SE while they were at it, wiping all my programs and settings. Luckily I had expected as much so had backed up and removed my data before I shipped it back. By this time I didn’t trust Time at all, and although the BIOS record now shows a Pentium, i’m still tempted to rip the lid off and have a look to see if it really has been changed.

It is in fact a re-badged FIC A430 Notebook.

I’m happy with it in general, I have used it for development for a couple of years with no major problems**. A slight annoyance is the keyboard which is a bit floppy/bouncy and has a space key which you have to really hit to get it to work. This doesn’t matter too much as I always plug in an external keyboard when doing any proper work on it.

I’ve now got three operating systems on it, win98 se, win 2kpro and the latest being suse Linux 7.2 professional, freshly installed yesterday and the subject of this log.

* not really affordable!
** apart from those self inflicted as a result of “experiments”