Thanks - I looked at that stuff and it's useful, but appears to all be stuff I'd utilize after after I get over this first obstacle in my path.
The Compaq Presario C751NR laptop has a button on the left side of the of the work area about 3/4 of inch above the F1 key. see: " http://www.tapchilaptop.com/uploads/Image/21.4.08/Compaq_C714NR_big2.jpg"; This is an illuminated key - Blue is on, Orange is off. This I think is a direct equivalent to the airplane mode mechanical switch many laptops have on them. It disables the onboard wireless. Without Vista, I can't get the fraking thing to turn back on - with vista off/on/off/on/off/on all day no problem - which leads to the logical conclusion that it's a "soft-key". Essentially equivalent to the mail, internet, media player, etc keyboard some cookie-cutter PCs come with which expect to transmit a signal to the supporting OS and have something occur except in this instance I suspect this button communicated directly with Vista's driver for the wireless chip. Like Press button -> Button tells Vista to off the wireless -> Vista driver tells chip to toggle itself off. As if there were no or little onboard bios support for controlling the chip. Unfortunately for me when Vista seized it's chest, made gurgling noises and fell over dead, the button was in it's off state. Now I press the button under Debian (with either the default Atheros linux module loaded or with that disabled and the ndiswrapper/madwifi driver config running) and no one appears to be there to hear the signal. It stays orange. Without reloading Vista -which would be a challenge since I don't have the media and the system restore disks won't work on the new harddrive (different size, no secret partition) - I gotta figure out a way to tell the onboard wireless chip to go back to an ON state. It's less important to me whether or not the soft-key ever works again. I'd be happy as a clam to have it permanently in the ON state (instead of permanently off). On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 11:13 PM, Chris Miller <[email protected]>wrote: > > It didn't disappear in the great bit-bucket in the sky, it was just > the mod-team certifying that it was indeed Not Spam (TM). > > On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Fletcher Bonds <[email protected]> wrote: > > I've got Debian (Lenny) running pretty well on my Compaq Presario C751NR > > laptop. I got this thing as a refurb and it came with Vista (yech). > > That's enough to make anyone suicidal. > > > Problems I'm encountering though if anyone has suggestions are: > > > > Wireless: > > There's a button on the laptop above the keyboard to turn the wireless > > on/off - it's been in the off state since I dumped Windows. The Compaq > bios > > is all but useless (dumbed down to the point that no advanced features > are > > accessible). I can not for the life of me figure out how to turn this > back > > on. I have tried the ndiswrapper/madwifi solutions to load a driver for > it > > and it does show up in lspci, but it never shows up ifconfig. I'm > guessing > > it has something to do with the fact the button is soft-offed somehow and > if > > I could just toggle it on life would be goodness. > > Yeah, there's a command to turn wifi on and off... > > Should be in here somewhere: > > http://wirelessdefence.org/Contents/LinuxWirelessCommands.htm > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit our group at http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
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