EDIMAX EW-7128G PCI card

[breakingbryan]

Should I be able to use an  EDIMAX EW-7128G PCI wireless card with VL 5.8? It says it comes with drivers for major Linux distros, but VL is not listed. Can I use any of them for VL? I'm new at Linux, but I'm pretty sure you still have to have the correct drivers for it, right? Thanks.

BBJ

[easuter]

It seems that one of the revisions of that PCI card uses a Ralink RT61 wireless chip. As of a couple of weeks ago, the RT61 opensource drivers have made huge development leaps and seem to work flawlessly.
My wireless card (from SMC) has that same chip and works with VL after compiling the driver, which takes only a few seconds 

However, if you haven't bought the card yet, then please try to find out the revision number first!
Sometimes same-model cards can have different chips if they are from different revisions (for example: the DLink DWL-122 rev.B1 has a RT2570 chip while the DWL-122 rev.C1 has a RT73 chip in it.)

We can help you check that out if you can get the revision number.

[breakingbryan]

Thank you for the quick response. I have not ordered the card yet. However, I cannot seem to find the revision number from the info listed on Newegg. I have emailed them about it to see if they have the info. Here is a link to the item on Newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833315041 .
I will continue to try to find the revision number. However if I cannot, will I be able to make it work no matter what chip it comes with, or can you suggest some other PCI card that would definitely be compatible? If I understand correctly, any card with the chip you mentioned should work, right?
Thank you again for your help.

BBJ

[easuter]

Thats is a very appealing price, with an antenna included and all. If they can't tell you the revision number, then they could at least confirm what chip is in that particular card they have in stock.

Anyhow, anything carrying the RT61 chip should work well on VL.

EDIT: My card is an SMC model SMCWPCI-GM and as far as I know, it doesn't have revisions with other chips in it.

[breakingbryan]

Well they said they have no way of telling what revision it is, or what chip it has because they can't physically go look at the product. Disappointing from Newegg, they're usually great. Anyhow, the only thing they could tell me is that they usually carry the latest revision of everything, whatever that may be. Where do I go from here? Do you have any way of finding out which revision is the latest, and what chip it has?

BBJ

[easuter]

breakingbryan, I have sent Edimax an email (actually one to each sales branch they have to make sure I get a reply  ) asking about this issue.

The only reason I'm worried about the revision numbers is because I had read a HowTo on Ubuntu  or Debian forums called something like  "EW-7128G PCI, RT61 version". So because they mentioned "RT61 version", I'm assuming there might be different ones out there.
But it looks more and more like RT61 is the only chip the card will have anyway...

[easuter]

breakingbryan, according to Edimax Taiwan  :

Thank you for the inquiry.
 
The baseband chipset of EW-7128g is RaLink RT2561ST,
there are two chipset of RT61: RT2561 and RT2661.

It is definitely an RT61 chip in all the cards of that model.
So it looks like a safe buy

Once you get it you can post back if you need help getting the driver installed.

[breakingbryan]

Cool, thanks for the help, and I will probably be back asking for help about the drivers.

BBJ

[breakingbryan]

Well the card came and I installed it on Windows with no mishaps, and it works great. How would I go about locating/installing the drivers on VL 5.8?

BBJ

[bigpaws]

http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum2/index.php?topic=1282.0

Bigpaws

[easuter]

breakingbryan,

The SerialMonkey rt2x00 open source project (yes, I know its a weird name) makes improved drivers based on the ones Ralink distributes for Linux. They work very well, but are still under development, so sometimes a driver with problems might slip into the downloads section.

I've singled out one thats worked perfectly for me, and uploaded it. But before I give you steps to install the drivers, I need to ask if you installed the kernel source code when you installed Vector. You can find out with this command:

Code:

ls /var/log/packages | grep kernel-src

What does that command give you?

[breakingbryan]

The response I get is:

/bin/ls: /var/log/packages: no such file or directory
vector:/~
root:#

I'm guessing that means I didn't install it...

Also, going from your how-to guide, there was no alias created for the card, and I didn't see it in VASM. The card is detected under lspci, though.

[bigpaws]

That is right. Please try to install again.

Bigpaws

[breakingbryan]

Alright I'm currently reinstalling VL 5.8, and I made sure to select the source code to install this time.

--edit--

It's done, and the source code is installed.

[easuter]

Ok cool, now you're ready to get the drivers compiled.
Open a terminal, and then logon as root (with the su command).

Follow these commands n this order, I'll explain each one as well:

1 - Enter the /tmp directory and download the driver source code:

Code:

cd /tmp
wget http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/easuter/rt61-cvs-daily.tar.gz

2 - Extract the compressed file and enter the build directory:

Code:

tar rt61-cvs-daily.tar.gz
cd rt61-cvs-2007051818/Module

3 - Compile the driver and install it:

Code:

make
make install

4 - Correct the network interface name:

Code:

mcedit /etc/modprobe.conf

Change this line:

alias wlan* rt61

To this:

alias wlan0 rt61

Save the file.

After that you can try following the wireless howto (http://www.vectorlinux.com/forum2/index.php?topic=1282.0) for getting connected. But if you can't mange with it, then post back here and we can guide you the rest of the way