Averatec AV6130HS wireless networking

[ricochen]

by following the guide
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php? ... t=broadcom
and my own try-and-error I finnally got my built-in wireless network card (an a-link Rt2500) to work and it's been working like a charm (I got connection interruptions while I'm using Windows XP Home sp2 installed).

Here's what I did
1> recompiled kenel (mine's kernel-2.6.9-gentoo-r1) with SMP disabled
Processor type and features --->
[ ] Symmetric multi-processing support

and wireless lan enabled (if this option was not enabled)
Device Drivers --->
Networking support --->
Wireless LAN (non-hamradio) --->
[*] Wireless LAN drivers (non-hamradio) & Wireless Extensions[/b]
***reboot your computer if you just enable this option otherwise you'll encounter problems while loading module ndiswrapper***
2>this step is optional if you just don't need the newest version of ndiswrapper
#echo "net-wireless/ndiswrapper" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
3>
#emerge wireless-tools ndiswrapper
4>
download the windows driver from ftp://ftp.a-link.com/wl54h/WL54driver2.2.6.0.zip
#mkdir /lib/windrivers
from the archive extract files Rt2500.INF and rt2500.sys in the folder Win2k to /lib/windrivers
5>Install windows driver by running
#ndiswrapper -i /lib/windrivers/Rt2500.INF
6>
#modprobe ndiswrapper
run
#echo "ndiswrapper" > /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6
'cause I need this module to be loaded every time I boot my notebook
7>
#iwconfig wlan0 essid <my_wireless_access_point_essid>
#ifconfig wlan0 up
#dhcpcd wlan0
8>until this point my ethernet connection is still up. After I'm done with step 7 I found out that I was not able to connect to internet so I executed
#/etc/init.d/net.eth0 stop
and wola! Everthing works as expected.

I feel happy now 'cause I've got one more thing to work in linux so that I don't need to boot into XP just to get my wireless network card working.

System specs:
Model AV6130HS
Gentoo (Updated) & Windows XP Home dual boot
Kernel linux-2.6.9-gentoo-r1
ndiswrapper version: 1.0_rc2 (testing version)