Netgear MA521 wireless adapter on Ubuntu/Xubuntu

16OC08, J.R. Buchanan

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In my article on installing Xubuntu 8.04 (probably plain Ubuntu as well) on a Toshiba laptop I mention that I did not immediately get the NetGear MA521 wireless adapter (using a RealTek RTL8180 chipset) working. I have since gotten it working, using ndiswrapper. Not my first choice, but it works well.

First I tried the native open source driver from sourceforge. I had been using it under an older version of Centos Linux. I now discovered that while it was a fairly new project in 2005 when I last downloaded it, it had since been abandoned, meaning that I already had the latest source.

So I tried to compile it. No luck. In fact, when I ran "make", it deleted all the files in the source directory and I had to restore them. I couldn't make a lot of sense of the Makefile at first glance, and decided that I wasn't going to take over the development of an abandoned project. I just wanted my network card to work as soon as possible.

That meant ndiswrapper and Windows driver. Yuck. But I thought I'd give it a try.

There were a lot of dead ends and false starts to what turned out be a fairly simple straightforward job. I'll leave out the unnecessary parts and just boil it down to what is really needed. I learned a lot with Google searches to get this done.

First, install ndiswrapper from the install disk. I tend to use the command line a lot, so I located the files:

pool/main/n/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-common_1.50-1ubuntu1_all.deb
pool/main/n/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-utils-1.9_1.50-1ubuntu1_i386.deb

on the install disk. I then installed them with "dpkg -i".

I also needed ndisgtk_0.8.3-1_i386.deb, so I located it at http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/net/ndisgtk and downloaded it, then installed it with "dpkg -i".

To prevent interferance from other drivers, I added:

blacklist b43
blacklist b43legacy
blacklist ssb

to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist using the vi text editor. I don't like vi a lot, but it's on pretty much everything that is Unix or Unix like.

blacklist bcm43xx

was recommended, but it was already present in the file.

Next, I needed the Windows driver files, at the least a .sys and .inf file. I'll skip a lot of dead ends and mention that the ones on the install disk for the card, and the ones downloaded from NetGear's site would not work.

A lot of web pages and support forum posts suggested getting the drivers at:

ftp://210.51.181.211/cn/nic/rtl8139abcd8130810xseries/whql-xp2k(620).zip

Since it was an IP address, I was not suprised when it wasn't in existance anymore.

I found the drivers on RealTek's site

I notice that they have both Windows and Linux drivers. Since I was in the middle of trying to get ndiswrapper working, I tried the Windows XP driver first. I'll perhaps try the Linux driver later.

I then ran ndisgtk, the graphical install program for the driver files. It is found in Xubuntu at Applications->System->Windows Wireless Drivers On Ununtu, it will be in a different location, of course. You can always type "sudo ndisgtk" in a terminal window.

I then simply selected the driver files, and, after

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