Belkin F5d7050 Ver 4 (zd1211rw)

I just got a new wifi stick, a Belkin F5D7050 ver. 4 usb dongle. Here's what I've tried to make it work:

1) Linuxant. It was the easiest setup by far, but I still couldn't connect to the internet, or even ping my router.

2) ndiswrapper. About the same results as Linuxant, except that whenever I had the device plugged in, it would freeze my computer every time the light on the dongle blinked, which was about every second. [Ironically, I have the exact same problem with a Linksys PCMCIA wifi card on a laptop I'm running with Xubuntu (with the exception that the Xubuntu box actually gets online, albeit outrageously slowly)... but that's another story.]

3) zd1211rw (http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/zd1211rw). This is the method I really want to get to work, but I cannot for the life of me figure it out. The linuxwireless.org website specifically states that they've successfully tested zd1211rw with the Belkin F5D7050 ver. 4.

After much trial and error, this is what I eventually get (as soon as I run ifconfig wlan0 up, then iwconfig wlan0 essid myessid, iwconfig wlan0 key mykey -- it doesn't remember my settings from boot to boot, or even if I unplug the dongle then plug it back in):

# dmesg

[snip]

usb 3-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
usb 3-1: new device found, idVendor=050d, idProduct=705c
usb 3-1: new device strings: Mfr=16, Product=32, SerialNumber=0
usb 3-1: Product: USB2.0 WLAN
usb 3-1: Manufacturer: Belkin
usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
usb 3-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
zd1211rw 3-1:1.0: firmware version 4725
zd1211rw 3-1:1.0: zd1211b chip 050d:705c v4810 high 00-17-3f AL2230_RF pa0 g--NS
zd1211rw 3-1:1.0: eth1
eth1 renamed to wlan0
udev: renamed network interface eth1 to wlan0
SoftMAC: Associate: Scanning for networks first.
SoftMAC: Scanning finished: scanned 11 channels starting with channel 1
SoftMAC: Queueing Authentication Request to 00:18:39:4e:c4:f8
SoftMAC: Cannot associate without being authenticated, requested authentication
SoftMAC: Sent Authentication Request to 00:18:39:4e:c4:f8.
SoftMAC: Open Authentication completed with 00:18:39:4e:c4:f8
SoftMAC: sent association request!
SoftMAC: associated!

# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0**** Link encap:Ethernet**HWaddr 00:17:3F:B0:44:4F
**********UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST**MTU:1500**Metric:1
**********RX packets:346 errors:136 dropped:22 overruns:1 frame:135
**********TX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
**********collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
**********RX bytes:70155 (68.5 Kb)**TX bytes:1072 (1.0 Kb)

# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0**** IEEE 802.11b/g**ESSID:"myessid"**Nickname:"zd1211"
**********Mode:Managed**Frequency:2.447 GHz**Access Point: 00:18:39:4E:C4:F8
**********Bit Rate=24 Mb/s
**********Encryption key:mykey** Security mode:open
**********Link Quality=100/100**Signal level=46/100
**********Rx invalid nwid:0**Rx invalid crypt:0**Rx invalid frag:0
**********Tx excessive retries:0**Invalid misc:0** Missed beacon:0

I'm no expert for sure, but doesn't it look like it should be working???

Does anyone have any ideas? Have any other Suse users out there gotten a wifi device running with the zd1211rw driver?

Ack!! I posted this in the wrong forum. :blink: Can a mod move it into the wifi subforum? ....sorry!!

i had a safecom usb dongle with the zd1211 chip-set. just had to install the firmware, went to YaST - network devices - network cards & set it up there. worked first time. In fact, i gave it to my son, he uses it now with SuSE 10.3 all the time

i had a safecom usb dongle with the zd1211 chip-set. just had to install the firmware, went to YaST - network devices - network cards & set it up there. worked first time. In fact, i gave it to my son, he uses it now with SuSE 10.3 all the time
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Oh wow, that makes me feel more optimistic!

How exactly did you set it up in Yast?

I went to Yast > Network Settings > Add
Device type: Wireless
Clicked the usb box
It automatically put bus-usb in the config name. I clicked next.
Then the wifi card config came up, and I put in my ESSID, WEP key, etc.
Finish

Does that sound right, or are there any settings I might be missing? Do I have to fill in the module name, something in the Routing tab...?

Thanks so much.

that's how i did it, except for ticking usb, as it tends to over-ride other settings. the rest is the same

that's how i did it, except for ticking usb, as it tends to over-ride other settings. the rest is the same
[/b]

I noticed that clicking USB gave it kind of a wonky name in setup. Thanks for the tip -- I reset it up in Yast without checking the USB box, and now when I reboot, iwconfig actually remembers the ESSID/WEP settings! That's definitely a positive.

The weird thing is that now when I run iwconfig wlan0, it can't find the access point, as it did before.

# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0**** IEEE 802.11b/g**ESSID:"myessid"**Nickname:"zd1211"
**********Mode:Managed**Frequency:2.462 GHz**Access Point: Invalid
**********Bit Rate=1 Mb/s
**********Encryption key:mykey** Security mode:open
**********Link Quality:0**Signal level:0**Noise level:0
**********Rx invalid nwid:0**Rx invalid crypt:0**Rx invalid frag:0
**********Tx excessive retries:0**Invalid misc:0** Missed beacon:0

Also, previously, the light would go solid green. Now it's back to blinking.

Maybe with all my tweaking I screwed something up, and I should reinstall everything from scratch and try setting it up again. :huh:

Delta!!! I found a post you made in a completely different forum, and it FIXED my problem! http://tinyurl.com/5w6ykx

All I had to do was change the network management from ifup to to Network Manager.

YAY! Thank you so much!!!

Excellent, glad you got it sorted,one day i will corral all my answers into a how-to & that will save me time hunting