I had my linux boxes (2.4.7 kernel) communicating fine in ad-hoc mode with some
old "WaveLAN Gold" cards that were purchased a few years ago. I'm using the
in-kernel orinoco_cs driver. After some frustration caused by the fact that for
some reason the Linux RedHad /etc/pcmcia scripts were just plain broken, I got
things working. (I copied over the scripts (only) from the pcmcia external
distribution, that seemed to fix things.) Everything was great, until...

One of the machines was a dual-boot Win2k/Linux machine, and I wanted to use the
wireless lan cards also under windows. In oder to get the windows utilities and
drivers working right, I upgraded the flash on the cards with Lucent's "Firmware
upgrade for Orinoco PC cards V8.10 - Winter 2002".

Now the cards work fine under Windows with the Wireless LAN at work, but they
won't work under Linux. (They also work fine under Windows2k with my neighbor's
Linksys access point - he had encryption turned off until I pointed out to him
that I could cruise the web via his internet connection and, if I wanted to,
watch everthing he was doing. Hopefully he now has encryption turned on.) But,
back to my problems. Now, under Linux, the cards seem to come up and respond
properly to all "iwconfig" commands, but they simply don't seem to see each
other.

I'm really bummed, because it was working fine and now its broken.

The only things I can think of to try at this point are:

1) tinkering with ad-hoc mode. From poking around on the web I've seen some
stuff that indicates the cards are by default in the "old" ad-hoc mode. But if
they're both in that mode they should interoperate, right?

2) build and install the latest orinoco_cs driver, just to see if it makes any
difference

Any hints? Can anyone confirm that the orinoco_cs driver is compatible with
this version of the orinoco firmware? I really want to get this working, but if
I spend much more time futzing around with it I think my wife is going to
divorce me. Sigh!

Thanks,

Duncan

p.s. Please copy replies to duncantcomcast.net.

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