Linux newbie needs help with wireless urgently

Okay, yesterday I installed YOPER Linux on my laptop, and that all went fine. However, I have absolutely no idea on how to get my wireless card to connect to my local area network.

I have a ZoomAir 11Mbps Wireless PCMCIA card in my laptop. Linux detects this, as it shows up in "Hardware Information" as being in PCMCIA card slot 1.

However, the green light on the ZoomAir never comes on, and I'm assuming it's a lack of drivers.

So - how do I solve this?

I'm a total linux newbie, and - although I googled multiple mentions of installing wireless drivers on Linux - any articles I've found have all been for people with some reasonable knowledge of Linux.

I would really appreciate an advanced Linux user or expert here giving me a step-by-step guide to installing drivers for my ZoomAir card.


Thanks very much in advance for any help


Edit: I've read other posts here, and it seems you don't need drivers if Linux detects your card, like it does with mine. But then - why does the power light not come on the wireless card? And why won't it work?

Again, thanks so much for help

Ok, I have no experience with linux on laptops or wireless, but I may be able to point you in the right direction-

First question:
Are you sure pcmcia is working? Try another card if you have one; doesn't matter what, just to make sure that something works in there.
- If nothing works in the pc card slot you may need to look into that.
- IF other pc cards do work you may need to load the driver for the card.

Distro-specific things sometimes throw configuration off so you might want to check out the Yoper forums for info as well.

Thanks for the reply

Yes - the PCMCIA is working, as I am writing this post via an ethernet PCMCIA card, wired into the wall.

I think it's a driver problem too, yet all the linux stuff I've googled online has said that drivers are only necessary if Linux doesn't recognise the device. Well, it does recognise it - I just can't do anything with it, and the status light is always off.

Things can be a bit tricky with Linux drivers, especially when you are just getting the hang of Linux.

There are two ways to load drivers-
1) built into the kernel itself, which basically means you need do nothing but also that you won't "see" the driver as loaded; either it will work or it won't.
2) loadable modules. Loadable modules have a few advantages, especially when you are trying to troubleshoot something. Biggest advantage is the ease of seeing if it is running using "lsmod". You can also easily stop and restart loadable modules using "modprobe" and "rmmod".

All these commands are run in a console at the command prompt-

lsmod
will show you the loaded modules

modprobe MODULENAME_HERE
will load a specific module

rmmod MODULENAME_HERE
will unload a specific module

Those commands may help, they may not.
You may need to go into the kernel config itself and check to see if support is enabled as a module or part of the kernel.

I think these cards have a Prism II chipset:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Linux.Wireless.drivers.802.11b.html#Prism2

You need to make sure that support for that chipset is enabled in your kernel. If it's not, you'll have to enable it and rebuild your kernel. (The specific directions on how to do this vary somewhat between distros, check your documentation.) If there is no driver for it, you will have to use ndiswrapper, which isn't too hard, but hopefully there is.