Arch Linux

Crocodil

Member

Registered: 2011-03-27

Posts: 10

Prism 2.5 wireless card disconnects

Hi,

I've got a hold of an old Dell D600 laptop and installed Arch Linux with XFCE on it. It works pleasingly nice for such an old computer (circa 2003) but I have a single issue with it that I don't know how to solve. The wireless card disconnects after some time and I'm not able to connect to my wireless router again.

Wifi works on a Prism 2.5 based miniPCI card and uses hostap_pci driver:

$ sudo lspci -v -s 02:03.0
02:03.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)
    Subsystem: Intel Corporation Wireless 802.11b MiniPCI Adapter
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 5
    Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
    Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
    Kernel driver in use: hostap_pci
    Kernel modules: hostap_pci, orinoco_pci

The router is D-Link DIR-615 and uses WPA2 for security. For the hostapp driver WPA is provided by wpa_supplicant and I'm using NetworkManager applet.

I don't even know how to start debugging what's happening, so I will be very grateful for any suggestions. I'm happy to give any more details if needed.

Best regards,
Crocodil

PS. Please excuse my poor English

I'mGeorge

Member

Registered: 2011-03-23

Posts: 150

Re: Prism 2.5 wireless card disconnects

probably you're using iwconfig provided through the wireless-utils to manually connect to your router. It should be a lot easier, less time consuming and possibly more stable regarding your wireless connection installing wicd and wicd-gtk(the wicd GUI) and use it to establish your wireless connection. I have a D-Link DIR -300 wireless router and a TP-Link wireless network card and everything works fine, although I'm using WEP for security as there's no need for WPA for an internal network.

---

I've first installed Arch in March

Crocodil

Member

Registered: 2011-03-27

Posts: 10

Re: Prism 2.5 wireless card disconnects

As you've recommended I have tried using wicd and wicd-gtk instead of networkmanager. Unfortunatelly when I use wicd-gtk, it doesn't find any wireless network when running a scan :-(

EDIT:
I think I'm going to have to replace the miniPCI wireless card... I'm not very well oriented which cards are best supported in linux, so I would be very grateful for help in choosing the right vendor.

I seem to remember that Broadcom has very poor drivers, what about Intel (I'm thinking about 2200BG), Atheros, Ralink and others?

Last edited by Crocodil (2011-03-31 23:32:23)

Crocodil

Member

Registered: 2011-03-27

Posts: 10

Re: Prism 2.5 wireless card disconnects

Bump! Can anyone please suggest a well supported miniPCI card or a chipmaker that is well supported under Linux? I need WPA/WPA2 support...