[TriLUG] Wavelan wireless card

[Thomas]

Greetings all!

After a hiatus of several years, I have taken a deep breath and once
again plunged into the world of Linux.  I installed Mandrake 10.0 on my
Dell Inspiron 4100 laptop this week without too much trouble.  A few 
things need tweaking, hopefully simple issues that will help me up the 
learning curve.

Anyhow, the first issue I need to address is turning out not to be so
simple.  I can't get my Lucent/Orinoco/Agere/Proxim/Wavelan wireless LAN
card to work.  The OS recognizes the card and correctly identifies it in
the configuration panel.  When I use the config wizard to get it
working, it asks for some parameters that I am unfamiliar with.  It
wants to know "RTS/CTS" and "fragmentation".  So far I am leaving those
blank.

After several days of trying to figure it out on my own, I continue to 
be stumped.  I've run the network wizard several times with various 
permutations to no avail.  Sometimes it appears that the card is 
working, but the OS cannot see it.  I've played with the card manager 
config file, can't really figure that out.

I have also been playing with Knoppix, running from CD-ROM.  It has no 
trouble using the wireless card, so I know it isn't a hardware 
compatibility problem.

Kindly help this clueless tyro.  Thanks!

TaB