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Hermes USB devices (orinoco_usb)

This page describes how to enable support for WiFi devices based on the Hermes chipset - using a USB interface - on Debian systems.

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The Orinoco USB driver is a fork of the [:orinoco:Orinoco] driver, specifically supporting early-model (aka "variant 1", "old variant") ORiNOCO USB wireless LAN devices. [#supported Supported devices] are listed at the end of this page.

These devices are essentially adapters. Internally, they consist of a PCMCIA (PC Card) device with a Lucent/Agere Hermes chipset, connected by a PCMCIA-to-USB ("EZUSB") bridge to the host system.

Firmware for the EZUSB bridge is required to be installed, which can be extracted from the relevant Windows XP driver using a utility script.

Installation

The Orinoco USB driver is not included in the mainline Linux kernel. It is required to be acquired from the Orinoco driver's "usb" Subversion branch and compiled on your system.

  1. Install the build-essential, relevant linux-headers, subversion, unzip, wget and wireless-tools packages: 

    $ su
# aptitude update
# aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r) subversion unzip wget wireless-tools
# exit

  2. Checkout the usb branch of the Orinoco driver: 

    $ svn co https://orinoco.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/orinoco/branches/usb orinoco_usb

  3. Compile the driver: 

    $ cd orinoco_usb
$ make

  4. Manually install the kernel modules: 

    $ su
# mkdir -p /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/updates/orinoco/drivers/net/wireless
# cp orinoco.ko orinoco_usb.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/updates/orinoco/drivers/net/wireless
# depmod -a -F /boot/System.map-$(uname -r) $(uname -r)
# exit

  5. Acquire and install the EZUSB bridge firmware: 

    $ cd firmware
$ ./get_ezusb_fw
$ su
# mv orinoco_ezusb_fw /lib/firmware

  6. Load the orinoco_usb module: 

    $ su
# modprobe orinoco_usb
    This module will be automatically loaded when your system is restarted and the device is connected. If not already performed, connect the device to your system.

  7. Verify your device has an available interface: 

    # iwconfig

  8. Raise the interface to activate the radio, for example: 

    # ifconfig eth1 up

  9. [:WiFi/HowToUse:Configure] your interface as appropriate.

Troubleshooting

Known Issues

Other Notes

PC Card devices containing an Intersil Prism 2 or 2.5 chipset can alternatively be used in the EZUSB bridge. An exception to this is high-powered devices (100/200 mW) as the adapter's USB voltage is insufficient.

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Supported Devices

The page ["HowToIdentifyADevice/USB"] explains how to identify a USB device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of  orinoco_usb  as at Subversion revision 1300.

Unsupported

All ORiNOCO USB "variant 2" / "new variant" devices. These devices use a single-board design with an Intersil Prism 2 chipset.

See Also

CategoryHardware | CategoryWireless