Installed ubuntu (arrrgh) and lost wireless & CD

[Net Llama!]

On Tue, 15 Aug 2006, Ed Jabbour wrote:
> Two problems here.  I don't want to keep Ubuntu, but cannot replace it w/o a
> network and w/o a CD drive.

You seem to have found a network to send the email, so i'm confused a bit 
by your claim.  Which distro are you looking to install?

> 1.  Network:  IBM T30 and a Netgear PCMCIA card, Made in China v.3.  Took the
> driver off the Netgear CD (more on this below) , ran ndiswrapper and got
> nada.  Upon reinserting the card, dmesg|tail shows:
> 	17183869.344000 eth1: resetting device . . .
>   	17183869.396000 eth1: uploading firmware
> 	17183869.480000 eth1: firmware version: 1.0.4.3
> 	17183869.480000 eth1" firmware upload complete
> 	17183870.480000 eth1: no 'reset complete' IRQ seen - retrying
> 	17183871:480000 eth1: no 'reset complete' IRQ seen - retrying
> 	17183871:480000 eth1: interface reset failure
> 	17183871:480000 eth1: prism54: Your card/socket may be faulty, or IRQ line
> 		  	   too busy:(
>
> The card works wo a hitch in Windoze 2K.

That only proves that the hardware isn't bad.  Which version of 
ndiswrapper are you using (if its not at least 1.22, that could be a 
problem).  Also, are you sure that ndiswrapper supports this card?

> 2.  CD drive:  This is very odd.  If I load a live CD of whatever sort,
> Gentoo, Knoppix, etc., it's recognized as a blank CD and won't mount.  If I
> insert the Netgear CD, it mounts and can be read.  Same for the Scrabble
> game CD, and same for the bootable IBM Windoze recovery disc, which also
> boots.

My guess is that the CD's that aren't working were either burnt at a speed 
faster than what your CDROM is capable of reading, or there's some other 
quirk in its abiltiies.  I've seen this happen more often than I'd like, 
and the usual solution is to reburn the ISOs at a much slower speed (like 
8x).

> Could these be problems w/ the  BIOS?  Any hints, pointers, guesses, greatly
> appreciated.  Think I'll install Gentoo - it's on this desktop.  It's a lot
> of work to maintain, but everything functions.  Oh no, wait!! I still have a
> Caldera 2.something around!  Maybe . . . . . .

The first problem could be a BIOS issue.  You should verify that you're 
using the latest BIOS.  It could also be a kernel or ndiswrapper bug.

The CDROMN problem is extrmely unlikely ot be a BIOS issue.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman                        netllama at linux-sxs.org
LlamaLand				http://netllama.linux-sxs.org