ndiswrapper and Ralink 2500
Posted: 2012-12-18 Filed under: network, system | Tags: ndiswrapper, rt2500 Leave a commentMy ancient laptop has a Ralink wireless card (RT2500). It has been supported out of the box for quite some time. Ironically, the wifi works somewhat better with the windows driver, when installed with ndiswrapper. At least in my experience… Or may be I am wrong and oblivious… :)
Anyway, here’s what I did on a Slackware 14.0 box. Install ndiswrapper-kernel and ndiswrapper-utils from SBo. The kernel source, should be present. Then, let’s check the hardware:
lspci | grep RT
lsmod | grep rt2500
iwconfig
The driver in use is rt2500pci. Blacklist it by creating a file /etc/modprobe.d/rt2500pci.conf, containing:
blacklist rt2500pci
More instructions are found in /etc/modprobe.d/README. Now navigate to the folder that contains the windows driver rt2500.inf and do as follows:
This installs the driver:
ndiswrapper -i rt2500.inf
This unloads the default driver:
rmmod rt2500pci
This loads ndiswrapper:
modprobe ndiswrapper
Add the last line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local, so ndiswrapper is loaded automatically on boot.
That’s it.
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