Linux that works with ATT USB wireless ?

Newbie alert.

I have tried Mandrake 10.1, Mandriva 2007, Ubuntu, and Kbuntu (yeah its KDE Ubuntu but I thought why not try it ?) trying to get my USB adapter to be recognized by a Linux Distro. Ndiswrapper always throws an error message about needing additional packages installed. After I install them I get even stranger error messages that quite frankly I don't know enough about Linux to figure out. I have gotten to where Drake shows the adapter (but no details) and I have lights on but as soon as the lights come on the keyboard locks so I cant use the CLI to do any probes. The only way to unlock the keyboard is to either disconnect the USB modem or to hit the soft reset button which is a no-no but I dont have data I am worried about losing on the machine yet.

In any event the machine is a Pentium D 805 at stock clocks with 512m of ram and a 5900U, currently Mandrive 2007 is installed. I figured it would make a nice rig to try Linux on but man this one thing is ruining it for me. The ATT USB adapter is from 2wire and is listed here http://www.2wire.com/?p=331 at the bottom of the page. I searched Google high and low and even tried Driverloader which is a Ndiswrapper wrapper I guess but nothing seems to work.

Has anyone gotten this USB adapter to work ? With millions of ATT DSL users out there someone has had to of tried this before me....

I dont want to have to buy a different USB adapter because I'm trying to do this with parts I already have on hand. As a last resort I will have to move my wireless modem into my office and go direct to a CAT5 cable but thats a last resort.

AFAIK not many if any Distro's will cooperate with a USB adapter.

I could be and probably am wrong though.

i did a bit of looking the other week when i was wondering the same thing.... i was unable to find any mainly was pci or mini pci wireless nic's.

While USB network adapter support is iffy (right fully so. USB for networking sucks), some devices do work. However the first thing you need to find out what's the real devicename of that AT&T thingie. AT&T didn't make that box, they only slapped their name on it. Find out who exactly does and what they call their device.

Linux can help there: Run a Linux Live Distro, plug the device in and check what it says with "lsusb" and "dmesg"

klingens:

lsusb shows nothing but - Bus 004 Device 006: ID 1630:ff81

dmesg shows a huge amount of data but specificaly as far as I can tell the portion dealing with the USB bus shows - USB disconnect, address 3 rejecting I/O to dead device

I can try to post the entire dmesg if you think it will help.

As far as the real device name the KDE control module for USB Devices shows it as "2wire usb adapter" with a vendor ID of 0x1630 and a Product ID of 0xff81 which is basicaly what lsusb gave.

I have verified the USB ports as working by plugging in a 1Gig Corsair memory stick which Mandriva immediately identified and opened a window showing the drive contents so the USB ports appear in working order.

Do you think ACPI might be the issue ? I find it very strange that my keyboard locks when I start ndiswrapper for a USB device, I wonder if an IRQ conflict between the keyboard and USB exsists....

It's probably USB IDs which don't detect that device

update-usbids works on most Debian and Debian based distros. No clue about Mandriva
However I can't find anything about a vendor with ID 1680.

Isn't any writing on the modem? Is it cable or DSL?
Look on 2wire.com for your model. All I can see is http://www.2wire.com/?p=106 where all models have ethernet jacks too. If yours does, use ethernet everywhere: far superior than USB both under Linux and Windows.

klingens said:

While USB network adapter support is iffy (right fully so. USB for networking sucks), some devices do work. However the first thing you need to find out what's the real devicename of that AT&T thingie. AT&T didn't make that box, they only slapped their name on it. Find out who exactly does and what they call their device.

Linux can help there: Run a Linux Live Distro, plug the device in and check what it says with "lsusb" and "dmesg"

Click to expand...

you need to figure out exactly what chip is inside the adapter. Ndiswrapper is always a last resort. There are several drivers that are not distributed with the linux kernel, like the acx100 driver, so all hope is not lost yet. Even if you can find us a model number, we can help you search for a correct driver.

Not sure why some dont like USB adapters, I get great performance from these. Admittedly I do not game online which might change my opinion if there was a latency issue with the adapters but otherwise Im running at 2.5MBPS through these adapters, my DSL is only good for 3mbps. Here is a picture of the chips on the USB adapter. The other side of the card had a Cypress EZ-USB FX chip CY7C64613-BONG (BONG or BONC) on it and a couple of smaller chips. I think the Agere chip in the photo would be the one needing drivers.





This is what WindowsXP shows as the installed driver for the USB adapter in question.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Orinoco_USB enjoy