Instructions for getting DWL-G650+ WiFi PCMCIA cards to work

This page gives instructions how to get a D-Link AirPlus DWL-G650+ rev B1 WLAN PCMCIA card to work in Ubuntu Breezy.

Background

The card uses the ACX111 chipset, which only recently has got functional drivers (or at least one which supports WEP). These drivers can be found here, and instructions on installing them here.

Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) includes this driver, so you do NOT need to compile the drivers to get the card to work. However, a firmware image needs to be uploaded every time the driver is initialised for the card to work. Apparently the driver itself works for multiple cards using the same chipset, but the firmware varies from card to card. At the very least, the firmware the ships with the linux-restricted-modules package in Breezy does not work with the DWL-G650+ card.

You might want to track the Ubuntu bug report regarding this issue

Upgrading the firmware

First, download the correct firmware image. The JonasFi collection at Acx100 wiki has the right version (1.2.0.30), as well as a link to the original driver. Uncompress the package (tar zxvf acx111-combo-firmware.tar.gz or unzip DWL-G650+_rev_Bx_Drv_v202.zip) and cd to the directory containing the right firmware image (either 1.2.0.30 or WinXP).

Ubuntu expects the firmware drivers to be in /lib/hotplug/firmware with a naming scheme like TIACX111.BIN-2.6.12-9-686. To copy the file to the correct place, issue the following command:

 sudo cp FwRad16.bin /lib/hotplug/firmware/TIACX111.BIN-`uname -r`

After this, remove the driver (rmmod acx_pci), and hotplug should reload it automatically. If the card works, the Link led should lit up. Then you can proceed to configuring the networking.

-- MattiAiras


CategoryHardware CategoryNetworking

WifiDocs/Device/DWL-G650+ (last edited 2008-06-27 10:14:49 by localhost)