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=pod

After having some
L<fun|http://perldition.org/blog/view/wireless_fun__03_27_06_13_02_03_>
with madwifi-ng and hostap already, I decided to put the Atheros MiniPCI
card I bought some months ago in my laptop to be able to use the cool
L<madwifi-ng|http://madwifi.org> drivers there as well.

Unfortunately after putting it in and booting you get that:

  1802: Unauthorized network card is plugged in -
  Power off and remove the miniPCI network card.

Some investigation
L<brought up|http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_unauthorized_MiniPCI_network_card>
that this is caused he card's PCI-ID being checked against a whitelist
in the BIOS. I liked IBM ThinkPads, and especially my X41, quite much so
far, but this check hardly seems to have a technical background. It just
forces people to buy IBM authorized cards..

Anyway, I wanted to use an Atheros card. So what were the possibilities?

Buying a PCMCIA card with Atheros chip? No.. I already had an Atheros
card around and wanted to use the integrated wifi. Some people reported
that the check could be switched of by flipping a CMOS bit. That doesn't
seem to work with my X41. I could still have flashed the BIOS with a
version with a changed whitelist, but I didn't want to fuck up a 1,600
EUR laptop. Therefor I decided to change the PCI-ID of my card. Only 40
EUR would have been lost if I did it wrong.

I found a nice
L<article|http://www.dagarlas.org/stuff/computing/article0001.php> that
explains how to do that very well. Basically you need to

=over 2

=item remove the MiniPCI wifi card

=item switch the laptop on

=item put the card in while the laptop is running (after the BIOS checks and before the Linux kernel boots)

=item install madwifi

=item use a special tool to change the PCI-ID to the ID of an authorized card

=item hack the driver to recognize the card with the new PCI-ID

=item go outside, enjoy the nice weather and hack

=back


Life can be so easy.

=cut
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