I’ve been a very happy resident of Linux land for a long time now and one of the few gripes I’ve had is the stability of my Netgear MA311 wireless network card. With every new release of Ubuntu it’s got less reliable at connecting and when I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 it got really bad, such that often it took four reboots to work and reboots are not something you have to put up with often in Linux.
So, I bit the bullet and bought a new Netgear WG311T, which the nice people at EfficientPC promise will work with Ubuntu. Given that my free time is so precious these days, I find myself much more inclined to buy may way out of problems than ever I was in the past.
With the order placed — which was fulfilled in a very timely and efficient manner — I took a moment to wonder if anyone else out on the intertubes had come across the same problem. A little light googling showed that a few people had issues and it didn’t take long before I came across Jun Sun’s page on how to flash the firmware on the MA311. For the uninitiated, this basically means updating the software that runs on the network card itself. The danger here is that if you get this process wrong you can write off the card.
I had a new card on order, so what was there to loose? I downloaded the appropriate firmware images for the MA311, followed the instructions given on the page and held my breath… Would it work? Would I trash the card?
The network card was still working! Result! I rebooted. It connected first time and continued to work perfectly. I rebooted again and again it connected immediately. Five reboots later and it was still working flawlessly. Years of intermittent behaviour solved in about an hour.
Of course this means I’m now the proud owner of two Netgear wireless network cards but I’ve taken the opportunity to upgrade to the faster 802.11g networking from the slower 802.11b networking supported by the MA311. I’ve picked up a DG834GT wireless router/modem from eBay for just over £20 and I can now safely pass the old MA311 on to friends or family knowing it won’t cause them any problems.
For anyone else using Ubuntu who is experiencing these problems, the following steps should resolve the problem:
- Download the PK010101.HEX and SF010802.HEX files from Jun Sun’s collection of firware images into your home folder.
- Open a terminal and enter the following commands:
- sudo apt-get install hostap-utils
- sudo prism2_srec -v -f wlan0 PK010101.HEX SF010802.HEX