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    Does linux support ThinkPad 11b/g Wireless LAN Mini PCI Express Adapter III ?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by varghese85, Aug 29, 2008.

  1. varghese85

    varghese85 Newbie

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    I am planning to buy a thinkpad T400 and run linux (OpenSuse 11.0) on it.
    Is the ThinkPad 11b/g Wireless LAN Mini PCI Express Adapter III
    supported on linux ?

    Please let me know at the earliest.

    /varghese
     
    varghese85, Aug 29, 2008
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  2. pianomano8

    pianomano8 Notebook Enthusiast

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    It looks like it will. I took the plunge and bought one, and just received it today. Haven't booted up linux yet, but windows says it's an Atheros chipset (pci product code 0x001c, which should make it a AR5007 based).

    This means it -should- be supported by madwifi, and (more importantly) the recently merged open source ath5k (or, if not, the even newer ath9k) driver. For older kernels/distros use madwifi drivers, for newer kernels/distros use the ath5k driver.

    So, linux users should be all set.
     
    pianomano8, Sep 2, 2008
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  3. pianomano8

    pianomano8 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I'm wrong, partially.

    $ lspci | grep Atheros
    03:00.0 Ethernet Controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

    The ath5k driver should support this card, so it will work in newer kernels, although it's still experimental.

    Madwifi's hal, at least the version that ships with Ubuntu Hardy does -not- support this card.

    Code: 
    wifi%d: unable to attach hardware: 'Hardware revision not supported' (HAL status 13).
     
    pianomano8, Sep 2, 2008
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  4. pianomano8

    pianomano8 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Ok, last reply, I promise.

    The thinkpad a/b/g card works fine with the new, open source ath5k driver. So any newer kernel that has that driver will work. (2.6.25 or higher, i think?). The older, binary, madwifi driver may support it if you compile it yourself from the latest code repository, but I didn't try. The latest released version does not support it.

    Sorry for the confusion, and I hope that helped. I'm rather enjoying linux on my T400 right now.
     
    pianomano8, Sep 2, 2008
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