D Link650 Wireless Card

DWL 650+ Installation Instructions Step by Step

Downloaded the acx100 driver from acx100.sourceforge.net and extract it following the README file. Downloaded the windows driver and dumped firmware in firmware/ directory:

wget ftp://ftp.dlink.com/Wireless/dwl520+/Driver/dwl520+_drivers_307.zip unzip dwl520+_drivers_307.zip cp Drivers/Win2000/WLANGEN.bin firmware/WLANGEN.BIN cp Drivers/Win2000/RADIO0d.BIN Drivers/Win2000/RADIO11.BIN firmware/ mkdir /usr/local/firmware cp firmware/*.BIN /usr/local/firmware/

Back in the acx100 driver directory, type:

make make install

This next bit only needs to be done once. Edit /etc/modutils/local-wireless (on Debian – edit /etc/modules.conf directly on other distributions). For 2.6.x kernels use /etc/modprobe.d/local-wireless or /etc/modprobe.conf on other distributions.

options acx_pci firmware_dir=/usr/local/firmware debug=0x0 options acx_usb firmware_dir=/usr/local/firmware debug=0x0

On Debian you will need to run “update-modules” to get it to rebuild modules.conf using this file.

Test install

modprobe acx_pci

Type “dmesg” and look for good/bad things ifconfig -a (should show wlan0) iwlist wlan0 scan (should show nearby wireless networks)

Configuration

You need to determine whether to run in ad-hoc or managed/infrastructure mode. e.g. at Soton is it in managed/infrastructure mode. All wlans have a name known as an (E)SSID – at Soton this is ECS-WLAN (case sensitive).

iwconfig wlan0 mode managed iwconfig wlan0 essid ECS-WLAN

Now configure the IP address as usual (ifconfig) or using DHCP:

dhclient wlan0

All done!

Permanent configuration

Debian specific:

In /etc/modutils/local-wireless add:

alias wlan0 acx_pci

In /etc/network/interfaces:

  iface wlan0 inet dhcp {{{   wireless_mode managed    # or ad_hoc   wireless_essid ECS-WLAN   #wireless_channel 11        #wireless_enc on         # encyrption   #wireless_ng_priv_key_128 false  # 40 or 128 bit encryption   #wireless_ng_priv_genstr magic password 

}}}

In fact, these don’t seem to work, so I’ve written a little script in /etc/network/wlan to do this instead

Wrapping up

Two magic commands are “iwlist” and “iwconfig”. Files to edit are /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/network/wlan. Initially you might need to run “ifdown wlan0” (ignore errors), “ifup wlan0”.