Puppy wireless drivers README

This download site contains a collection of dedicated Linux wireless driver packages for Puppy Linux with kernel 2.4.29 - versions 1.0.4 and 1.0.5.
compiled by tempestuous, September 2005.
No guarantees.  No support.

A dedicated driver is one written specifically for Linux, as opposed to ndiswrapper (and the commercial Linuxant DriverLoader) which "wraps" a Window$ driver.

The type of Linux driver for particular wireless adaptors is NOT determined by the brand/manufacturer, but by the chipset contained within.  Documentation provided by the manufacturers is infamous for not containing this information, so a good place to start is the Wirelss Adapter Chipset Directory at
http://linux_wless.passys.nl

If this level of investigation sounds like too much effort, just use ndiswrapper and read no further.  ndiswrapper is the uncomplicated solution.  Dedicated drivers are the thorough solution ... but usually require some effort.

The driver packages are all gzipped tarballs.  They are designed to be uncompressed from the uppermost directory.
Some driver packages will uncompress files into /usr.  This will fail if the system has no persistent pupfile.


Once your chipset has been identified, here are the driver packages available on this site -

NOTE: There is NO dedicated driver for Broadcom-based devices.  ndiswrapper should be used.


CHIPSET								DRIVER

ADMtek ADM8211							adm8211

Atheros								MADWiFi

Atmel AT76C5XXx							SourceForge atmelwlandriver

Atmel AT76C503/505
(USB versions only)						BerliOS at76c503a
(these drivers already in Puppy 1.0.4)

Intel PRO/Wireless 2100					ipw2100

Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG/2915ABG		ipw2200

Intersil Prism2/2.5/3					linux-wlan-ng

Intersil Prism2/2.5/3
(not including USB versions)			Host AP

Intersil Prism
GT/Duette/Indigo/Javelin/Xbow/Frisbee	Prism54

Ralink rt2400/2500/2570					Rt2x00.serialmonkey.com

Realtek RTL8180L						Realtek

Texas Instruments ACX100/ACX111			Acx100


Additionally, there is a WPA client encryption utility, wpa_supplicant, which supports -
HostAP
MADWiFi
Prism54
atmelwlandriver
ipw2100/2200

and there is a HostAP daemon, hostapd, to use the host computer as an access point.  hostapd supports -
HostAP
Prism54

README files for each package contain Puppy-specific information, including configuration.
README2/README3 files are original documentation from source code.
"connect" scripts are supplied containing the necessary commands to configure wireless connections.