Laptop Expansion Slot

[Tib]

Alright, after geeking away at my HP laptop, trying to get the Atheros wireless card to work, and ending up just borking the install of 1.8 x64, I decided to give up on it, and just wait until my wireless is supported in a future kernel release....but I still want wireless....so, I was thinking about USB wireless cards, and then I remember I have my 54MB wireless card for my old laptop, I think these cards are called PCI cards for laptops? Anyhow, I figured, great! I'll just use that instead, since it's a couple years old, I know Linux has drivers for it (I'll cry if it doesn't), so I popped it in....and.....nothing.....I don't know how to make the expansion slot work on my laptop.....I run Ubuntu on my older laptop, with this exact same wireless card, and it works great, but my new laptop, for some reason, the card won't even light up/power up when I plug it in....can anyone tell me why this is? and how to fix it? I would very much like to have wireless .

[cowboy]

You might try here and read this post.. viewtopic.php?p=11007&sid=ca2d580c62de5696f4e8d378bb972a40#p11007
If you read the entire thread you can get a grasp on the situation with Atheros card.

[Tib]

lol, I already read it, cause I was posting in it/following the thread, trying to get my Atheros card working, and it didn't work, so now I'm just trying to find out how to get my PCI laptop card to work, so I have wireless....I just can't figure out how to make the PCI expansion slot on my laptop turn on....any idea how to do that?

[cowboy]

LOL...so you have.
Since the only Linux program that will load is Hardy or Ultimate Edition on my lap..did not know if the expansion slot works before..on my lap it does not either.
Fact: Even though you have a dual core 64 bit lap does not mean you have a XP64bit or Vista64bit OS installed..could be the 32 bit like my Vista install. Hence the problems running 64bit Hardy or UE1.864bit...I am not talking about any other previous versions of Ubuntu or Ultimate Edition, ndiswrapper can install the driver from Windows but it will not work on a 64 bit 1.8 or 8.4
However a USB will work if you get the drivers from the installation CD, maybe the drivers you need for the expansion slot is on the CD that came with your expansion card..

Also you might look here for working Wireless.. viewtopic.php?f=20&t=52

[SaddleTramp]

Check the bootup process to make sure BIOS is picking up the "PCMCIA" slot & check under System/Admin/BUM & Services to see if the PCMCIA drivers are installed. Also check what PCMCIA version the slot is. If it's the new format (don't know what's out now, sold my laptop 3 years ago and think it might have been 1.2 or something slot) and may not be backward compatible for that 2yr old card. Of course you prolly have already checked on this but thought I'd throw it all out there

[Tib]

Yea, I checked the BIOS twice now...it's total crap on my laptop, it only lets me change about 5 things outside of the date/time, including the boot order....I really hate these stupid BIOS's that don't let you change anything....but, the PCMCIA slot isn't even listed in the BIOS, nor is any other hardware aside from the HD/DVD drive for booting purposes, so I have no way of enabling/disabling it via the BIOS...and I just checked the BUM and Services, there's nothing in either about any PCMCIA stuff, so I assume there aren't any drivers installed for it? if there aren't, how do I install drivers for it, so it's a working piece of hardware?

[cowboy]

What is the make and model # for your card ?

[SaddleTramp]

OK, for all you wireless & Bluetooth fans...open Synaptic...make sure 'ALL' is selected in left panel...search "pcmcia" (w/o the quotes "")...there will be a list of anything that "pcmcia" can affect... somewhere in there you'll find "pcmciautils"..install it...also, for the BlueTooth fans, looking into the list is "bluez-pcmcia-support" that you might be looking for...hope this helps ya'll

Edit: Forgot...you can also do a search on "wireless" and find 'wireless-tools"...

[Tib]

@cowboy - It's a Linksys Wireless-G Notebook Adapter, model is WPC54G v2

@Saddle - the PCMCIA-utils was already installed, I installed the bluetooth thing too, just in case...still no luck, it won't even turn on, the Power and Link lights won't even light up when it's plugged in....I just don't know what the deal is....

[SaddleTramp]

@cowboy - It's a Linksys Wireless-G Notebook Adapter, model is WPC54G v2

@Saddle - the PCMCIA-utils was already installed, I installed the bluetooth thing too, just in case...still no luck, it won't even turn on, the Power and Link lights won't even light up when it's plugged in....I just don't know what the deal is....

Tib...I don't got a clue bud...like I said...sold my laptop 3 years ago and been back on desktops ever since...& Windows was all I used back then...haven't ever used anything wireless on desktops so for me to start looking into it would be like backing up for ya'll...but ya might search the other forums (linux, ubuntu, etc..) for the pcmcia power thing as well...you could also, at least for now, install the 32 bit & dual boot between the two...maybe you'll see something in the way it's set up in the 32 bit that others haven't and get an idea how you might get it in 64 bit..who knows...stranger things have happened