getting a D-link wireless LAN card to work with Mandrake 8.1

[nuclearmonkey]

I just got Mandrake 8.1 installed on my IBM Thinkpad 600 (after quite a few problems with the X-server), and everything seems to be working fine, minus one little thing, the wireless network card doesn't work. I thought it would be OK at first because it detected a LAN card, and it even was assigned a DCHP IP address from the router, but when I try and open a webpage it gives me the network configuration wizzard, and I don't see the card on the list. Keep in mind, I'm a BIG linux newbie, I'l played around a little bit before, but right now I'm as far as I've ever gotten. Linux has come a long way, and I look forward to being able to use it on my laptop, but that isn't going to happen without being able to use my wireless network first. Does anybody have any ideas, or possible a guide somewhere. Hopefully this will be as easy as possible, because I'm anxious to get started, I just don't want to risk screwing up the install and needing to start over. Thanks for any input

 

[PolyPill]

Here's a good set of instructions:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2001/03/06/recipe.html

They assume that your kernel doesn't have support for wireless installed. I'm not sure if mandrake does or not.

 

[mcrites]

Are you using the dwl_650, if so you can use the pcmcia_cs package. It should be installed, you might have to install the rpm. Then make sure that the pcmcia daemon is running, it should install the card as eth1, if you have a builtin ethernet being installed as well. Otherwise it will be eth0 I believe. At one time during the development of the pcmcia driver it was called something else, so you may need to look at the docs to see what device it comes up with. Then use that device to configure it however you do it in the distro or you can configure it manually with /sbin/ifconfig (device name such as eth0) IP NETMASK. Next, you need to tell which network is on your device to the kernel with /sbin/route add -net 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev eth0. Then you will need to add the route to your gw with something like /sbin/route add default gw 192.168.1.1. This is for only a temp fix, because you will need to figure out how your distro does it so you wont have to do it everytime you reboot.