ndis on 6.1-PRERELEASE

[Bill Paul]

> I'm trying, and failing so far, to get ndis running on 6.1-PRERELEASE 
> (Sat Feb 4).  I was using ipw but it frooze the system.

Even though there's nothing I can do about it personally and you don't
happen to perceive it as being your primary problem, it would have been
nice if you'd bothered to elaborate further on this.

> I have an IBM ThinkPad T41.  I grabbed the drivers from http://www-
> 307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-59438
> 
> After downloading and extracting the files from 1rwc88ww.exe, 
> I used w70n501.inf and w70n51.sys as inputs to ndisgen.
> 
> When asked for firmware, I supplied w70n51.sys the input.

No, wrong. You didn't read what ndisgen said about the nature of firmware
files. There are _extra_ files, in addition to the .inf and .sys files.
The Intel driver doesn't have any: they compiled the firmware for the
chip directly into the driver (which is why w70n51.sys is several megabytes
in size -- not only did the compile it in, they did it in S-record format).
 
> The result was w70n51_sys.ko and w70n51.sys.ko

Go back and do it again, this time skipping the firmware by just
hitting enter at the prompt. You should only have w70n51_sys.ko.
 
> I loaded ndis.ko, if_ndis.ko, w70n51.sys.ko, and w70n51_sys.ko (in 
> that order).  dmesg showed:
> 
> ndis0: <Intel(R) PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter> mem 
> 0xc0214000-0xc0214fff irq 11 at device 2.0 on pci2
> ndis0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
> ndis0: NDIS API version: 5.1
> ndis0: Ethernet address: 00:0c:f1:27:67:f5

Looks fine so far.

> ndis0 is unable to set/retain an SSID while it is UP.  When DOWN, 
> yes, it takes an SSID, but moving the card to UP loses the SSID:

It doesn't "lose" the SSID. It's not able to associate in the first
place. Setting the SSID when the interface is down doesn't have any
effect on the chip. When it's up, ifconfig will report exactly what
the NDIS driver's current state is. (If it's not associated, it'll
report as much.)

Unfortunately, you provided very little additional information. In
particular, you failed to report the output of "ifconfig ndis0 scan"
to us. If the card doesn't see an AP named "foo" when you do a scan,
it won't be able to associate.

You also failed to tell us what kind of AP you're trying to associate
with and what security options, if any, may be set on it. You also
didn't mention if your laptop has an RF kill switch and whether or not
you turned it on.

You should be able to just do "ifconfig ndis0 ssid <myssid> up" and have
it associate when it starts up.

-Bill

--
=============================================================================
-Bill Paul            (510) 749-2329 | Senior Engineer, Master of Unix-Fu
                 wpaul at windriver.com | Wind River Systems
=============================================================================
              <adamw> you're just BEGGING to face the moose
=============================================================================