How To Get The Netgear WN311T To Work

Unfortunately there is no Linux driver for this PCI wireless adapter.  Believe me I have searched.  The Marvell driver for the TopDog is said to work, but under Intrepid I couldn’t get it to work.

The Chipset

The chipset in this adapter is the following:

lspci -nn | grep Marvell

Result:

01:08.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88W8361 [TopDog] 802.11n Wireless (rev 03)
Subsystem: Netgear Device 7e00
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 10
Memory at fdec0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Memory at fdee0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [access denied]

To use this adapter we need to use ndiswrapper and the Windows driver.

How To Get Atheros AR242x To Work on 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

Updates

**02-24-2009** Instructions for fix after update to kernel 2.6.27-11-generic below.  This how to uses compat-wireless-2009-02-24.tar.bz2. It was tested on (K)Ubuntu 8.10 KDE 4.1.2. Kernel version 2.6.27-7-generic & 2.6.27-9-generic

For instructions on getting the AR242x to work on 8.04 click here.

Introduction

You could see this as part 3 in the series: How To Get Atheros AR242x Wireless To Work
It’s with disappointment that I have to report the following:

I started with a fresh install of Kubuntu 8.10, the reason for this is simple I wanted to make sure that nobody could say “you should have done a clean install”. On a clean install out of the box the AR242x doesn’t work.

What I Tried First

So I started to search for solutions. There a several solutions out there here is a quick list:

The last option worked the best for me so that is what I’ll go with for this how to. Let me clarify that ath_hal, ath5k and ath9k are all developed by madwifi so props to them for doing such a great job of developing the drivers that make wireless for the AR242x work under Linux.

How to get Atheros AR242x wireless to work. 2

**10-23-2008** This how to still uses madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz And has been tested by me and works for (K)Ubuntu 8.0.4.1(both x86-64 and i686) with kernel 2.6.24-21-generic. And once again every one who has problems please re-try the how to.

**09-17-2008** Thanks to Gideon, who told me the links weren’t working any more. This how to now uses madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz As always this revision has been tested by me and works for (K)Ubuntu 8.0.4.1(both x86-64 and i686) with kernel 2.6.24-19-generic. And once again every one who has problems please re-try the how to.

**09-03-2008** This How to now uses the newest snapshot madwifi-hal-2008-08-15-r3862-20080903.tar.gz. As always this revision has been tested by me and works for (K)Ubuntu 8.0.4.1(both x86-64 and i686) with kernel 2.6.24-19-generic.

**09-01-2008** This How to now uses the newest snapshot madwifi-hal-2008-08-15-r3851-20080829.tar.gz. If you posted a comment to say it isn’t working then please re-run everything. And report back to verify that the solution is now working for you. As always this revision has been tested by me and works for (K)Ubuntu 8.0.4.1 with kernel 2.6.24-19-generic.

This is a revision of my original post using the solution provided by Madwifi it’s been tested by me and it works.

Windows drivers are here

If you own the same laptop as I do, a Toshiba A205-S5825, then you probably have the same problem, if you are using Hardy or Gutsy with the newest Kernel(2.6.24-19-generic) or older, the wireless doesn’t work out of the box.

It cost me about an hour to solve this mainly because no one knew anything about this particular chipset.

So here is the solution for the AR242x. If you have a chipset in the A5700 series then this could work for you too.

The solution is quite simple and only takes you a couple of minutes to apply and then you can use your wireless.

For this How to you do need wired internet to the computer.

What modules device drivers have got installed

“Mini How To” What modules and device drivers have got installed.

For this Kubuntu Linux also has a simple command:

lsmod

This will list all modules and device drivers installed in to your kernel.

For individual modules run:

lsmod | grep mudulename

For instance:

lsmod | grep ath

Will result in:

ath_rate_sample        15360  1
ath_pci               113448  0
wlan                  211888  5 wlan_tkip,wlan_scan_sta,ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
ath_hal               280416  3 ath_rate_sample,ath_pci

This command is used for debugging purposes mostly often when somebody has a problem lsmod and lspci as well as lsusb are often what you are asked to run in debugging what your problem is. Especially when you ask for my help on this website or on the forums and the IRC channels.