NetGear PCMCIA card has suddenly quit working in Xenialpup64... (FIXED ITSELF)

[mikewalsh]

Evening, gang.

The title is kinda self-explanatory, guys.

I use this NetGear PCMCIA wireless card on the new-to-me Dell Latitude I purchased last year. It has a slot for these cards, and it's just a darned sight more reliable than the built-in Broadcom b43 nightmare.

I run 3 Puppies on here; Fossapup64, Xenialpup64, and Tahrpup64, though Xenial64 gets the lion's share of use most of the time. I last used the Dell about 4 days ago; I booted into Xenial64 around an hour ago, and suddenly the network connection has quit working. Xenial, with the k4.9.58 kernel, no longer recognises the NetGear card.....and even after 'reloading' the ath5k driver, the card is simply not "there". The Ethernet connection is picked-up, as is the Broadcom card.....but the NetGear card, so far as the system is concerned, might as well not even be plugged in any longer..!

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Well of course, what with this being quite elderly when I bought it, there's me thinking, "Yup; that's it. Things are starting to pack up already..." But that's not the case. I've tried Tahrpup64, and am currently in Fossapup64; the card is working perfectly in both of these Puppies.

It's a bit of a head-scratcher, this one. Why should the card simply quit working between one boot and the next? Where's the driver gone? Why is it no longer recognised? I confess, I'm no networking guru, but I've run thru all the usual 'fixes' & 'workarounds' with no success. It's annoying; the Broadcom actually works under Fossapup AND Tahrpup, but under Xenialpup it never has functioned.....here, it's the NetGear or nothing.

Swapping kernels for a different one will be a major PITA, 'cos I've had to compile the drivers for the Nvidia GPU in this laptop. Performance under the kernel 'nouveau' driver is absolutely atrocious for some reason, regardless of the Puppy in use (and I tried several before settling on these 3). Nouveau just doesn't play nice with this Quadro NVS-135m chip; with the official drivers, on the other hand, it's like a totally different card.

Can I 'reset' things by deleting a script somewhere, and starting from scratch with networking? Though even if that's possible, it still doesn't explain why the kernel no longer detects the card.

Any ideas, guys? Suggestions/advice, etc, will be very much appreciated.....as always. I do NOT want to get the built-in b43 "functional". Sorry, guys, but I have a long-standing aversion to Broadcom stuff; I've never got on well with it.....so, please; no suggestions along those lines.

Mike.

[williwaw]

could it be a hardware failure? mine used to get quite warm....

the good news is their quite cheap on ebay. just research for atheros, not broadcom

[mikewalsh]

Well; the problem has resolved itself, it seems. Appears to have been a kernel 'glitch'.

After first checking Tahrpup earlier - and finding the NetGear card worked OK - then spending the last couple of hours in Fossapup with the wifi behaving itself, I thought I'd take a last look at Xenialpup again to see what the 'state-of-play' was before shutting down for the night.

Whaddya know? Of course, it's all back to normal & behaving itself again....

could it be a hardware failure? mine used to get quite warm....

the good news is their quite cheap on ebay. just research for atheros, not broadcom

@williwaw :- Like I said in the first post, the card was working fine in Tahrpup64 AND Fossapup64 on the same machine. Apparently, it was JUST Xenialpup64.......and only for that ONE boot. (And this card has always run pretty cool.)

(*shrug*)

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Which all goes to prove what I've been saying for long enough. With so many millions of lines of code in the present-day kernel, it would truly be a small miracle if nothing EVER temporarily "threw a wobbly". Torvalds and his team produce amazing work, no-one can deny them that. The most amazing thing of all is that they THEN give this masterpiece away for free.....

Really & truly, NO Linux user is in any position to complain about the kernel. The most laughable thing of all is that a sizeable percentage of geeks/ubergeeks seem to be under the delusion that this affords them some kind of God-given right to bitch about things that aren't to their liking..!

Unreal.

Most folks, I feel - like yours truly - are just grateful that it works as well as it does....

Mike.

[williwaw]

I left out the word intermittent, as in "could be an intermirttent hardware failure". as I have seen occasionally with heat, but yours is running cool, nice!

[bigpup]

I assume you have done the Quickpet -> Info -> Xenialpup update.

Xenialpup had several updates and you may have to run this several times.

An e2fsck of the Xenialpup save could find something that it may correct in the save.

The network connection program you use could be an issue.

There was a lot of code tweaking with the programs when Xenialpup was developing.

So try a different connection program.

[bigpup]

Why should the card simply quit working between one boot and the next?

When the computer starts up, the bios turns on the hardware.
Sometimes it misses something or does not get it completely turned on.
Why?
Because it is a computer and that is what they do, just to mess with your mind.

In early days of computer development, the reset button switch was first thing that got put in a computer.
They got tired of constantly having to turn the power off and on to restart the computer, when something locked up, stopped working, etc.........

All 3 of these Puppy versions, have slightly different boot up processes, controlling the finding and setting up, of hardware, as it boots.
Xenialpup development was the time, when a little tweaking was being done, to determine when and if, delay was needed, to allow stuff to fully connect and power up.
Before proceeding with the boot process.