puppy on hidden wireless network and Windows domain

[Kando]

I am trying to give new life to laptops and Puppy 5.2 seems to work just great with the Latitude D600's I have. I am still testing using the live cd, but I can not get the system to connect to the wireless network in the school. The wireless card is there and visible, I put in the school's ssid and wep code, the interface shows as active, but there is no data sent or received and browsers will not connect to any sites.

Should I just bite the bullet and install?

Also, is there an easy way to connect to the Windows domain for printing and documents?

Thanks,

[DaveLembke]

I'd install if the hard drive doesn't have important info on it. Otherwise with a Live install you always have to reconfigure as for settings are wiped out after shutdown. Depending on the wireless card you are using some are OK with Linux and others has issues.

What NIC are you using for Wireless? And is it connected thru PCMCIA slot or USB 1.1 port?

[Kando]

Well, these are old and have not been used in about a year or so. Installing may just do the trick. The wireless card is installed, not usb or pcmcia. It shows up as b43legacy. If built in cards don't work for this sort of thing, then these are headed for the recyclers as there is no budget to purchase wireless cards for them.

Thanks for the answer,

[DaveLembke]

wifi cards are cheap these days. Even with no budget you can have wifi for about $20 probably with

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1GK0D21487

Support Operating System Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Win7, Linux, MAC

[Kando]

Guess you have not worked at a NYC public school. Last year we had to have the principal order paper on her personal credit card because of the budget cuts. Also, having a card sticking out of the side of the laptop is just begging kids to pull it out. I typed in, lspci -nn | grep -i 14e4, that I got from another site and it comes up as a Broadcom Corp bcm4306 802.11b/g wireless lan controller. I am trying System>Administration>additional drivers and it looks like something is downloading, but the download window has not moved in about 10 minutes.

I will let you know how it goes, going to let it run and come back later.

Thanks,

[Kando]

No love for the puppy.

The download timed out and failed, and I think that I will be trying another version, this just seems to be too much of a headache.

Thanks for the replies,

[DaveLembke]

Fedora for me has been really good with wifi success. I have a Thumb drive with it as a bootable device and its worked on about 14 different laptops ranging in age from 2005 model to modern with different chipsets for wifi.

[Kando]

Thanks for the heads-up, I will check that out when I get back on Monday.