Booted with the Netgear MA521 PCMCIA card inserted. It's showing up in hardware under Unknown/Others as 10ec:8181. I've seen references to this using the Realtek RTL8180L chipset. I also am not seeing much in the way of success stories. Some people have had luck getting it to work with ndiswrapper, but that sounds like way more trouble than it's worth. Maybe I should just get a different card.
No joy with D-Link DFE-690TXD either. I wish I could find ANY PCMCIA card that worked.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
TinyMe Linux on a Compaq Armada M300
I was impressed enough by the LiveCD of TinyLinux that I decided to install it over BeaFanatiX (which is a great distro, but is at heart a modified version of a very old Ubuntu release, and besides...Firefox crashed constantly with Flash installed).
Unlike other try-before-you-buy LiveCDs, TinyMe is installed only from an icon on the booted LiveCD desktop. I wanted to replace the entire hard drive contents with TinyMe, and selected the appropriate options. When it says something like "reboot and select 'use existing partitions'" it means it; I couldn't get the installation to work until I did exactly what it said.
After installation, I needed to manually configure the network settings for the ethernet connection; this wasn't difficult via PCC on the desktop. The only annoyance was that TinyMe, in it's enthusiasm to detect the built-in speakers and microphone, began blaring feedback as it booted X. I quickly plugged in headphones and then was able to find Aumix ("Start" > Audio & Video). Dragging the control to zero for "Mic" did the trick.
Now I've been trying to get my old webcam working with Skype 2, which I installed using Synaptic (it wasn't there without a reload). I have a Logitech QuickCam for Notebooks Pro, which shows up as in PCC > Hardware > Look at and configure the hardware under Unknown/Others > (null) as Vendor ID 0x046d and Device ID 0x08c3 (046d:08c3). I've tried installing several packages via Synaptic but so far, no luck: the video options in Skype still indicate no devices are installed.
No luck with dkms-qc-usb, which is not surprising, I guess, given that my device ID is not listed in the package description. dkms-uvcvideo and dkms-qc-usb-messenger didn't work either.
Some people seem to have had luck with a spca5xx driver. I tried dkms-gspcav1, which seemed like a good bet given some Googling suggesting that this was the way to go if using a kernel as recent as mine. Still no luck.
I see some references to an issue in which this webcam will not work with pwc-kmp (see http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpackman.links2linux.org%2Finstall%2Fpwc-kmp&ei=xTdXSMjBI5KOsAPjloCgDg&usg=AFQjCNH_-5xQt4CPBx__YRwinpe8TGT1Ig&sig2=EPXMXrsLKwf68tA-SN7KJQ).
I found an article discussing the headaches of webcams with Linux (http://www.linux.com/feature/118896). I thought perhaps I needed to do additional steps, like that modprobe stuff. But the output from Synaptic makes it seem like the package was in fact added to the kernel.
I'm a little less optomistic that it's even possible to get this webcam working after reading this: http://www.quickcamteam.net/documentation/faq/logitech-webcam-linux-usb-incompatibilities. Then again, there are clearly people who have gotten this device ID to work (http://www.coursevector.com/linuxcamera/).
Now I'm trying an old crappy LabTec camera. I plugged it in, opened PCC, and it automatically detected it! Interestingly, it sees it as a Logitech -- 046d:0870 -- and it's listed under Webcam > QuickCam Express. What I don't know is whether it would have been detected had I not installed those packages. It's seen by Skype as "Logitech QuickCam USB (/dev/video0)". Unfortunately Skype crashes when I make a video call with it.
After a reboot, it's no longer crashing, but (a) the transmitted picture is an unrecognizable mass of colored pixels, and (b) the video from the other machine's camera is no longer being drawn (it was showing up just fine before even though the Armada was not transmitting video). I tried uninstalling all the webcam packages I added and reinstalled dkms-qc-usb (which, given its description, seemed the best bet). I ran Skype, and just before it crashed, I saw a clear image from the other computer's webcam and no image from my own. Rebooting.
Now Skype is crashing as soon as the call connects (granted, I have my MacBook set to automatically send/receive video). Ugh.
New approach: use a two-port USB 2.0 PCMCIA adapter: the Iogear GPU202. After plugging it in, I see it adding three entries under Unknown/Others in the PCC hardware utility: USB, USB, and Unknown device 00e1.The vendor:device is 1033:0035. I plugged in the LabTec but it doesn't seem to be showing up in hardware.
Unlike other try-before-you-buy LiveCDs, TinyMe is installed only from an icon on the booted LiveCD desktop. I wanted to replace the entire hard drive contents with TinyMe, and selected the appropriate options. When it says something like "reboot and select 'use existing partitions'" it means it; I couldn't get the installation to work until I did exactly what it said.
After installation, I needed to manually configure the network settings for the ethernet connection; this wasn't difficult via PCC on the desktop. The only annoyance was that TinyMe, in it's enthusiasm to detect the built-in speakers and microphone, began blaring feedback as it booted X. I quickly plugged in headphones and then was able to find Aumix ("Start" > Audio & Video). Dragging the control to zero for "Mic" did the trick.
Now I've been trying to get my old webcam working with Skype 2, which I installed using Synaptic (it wasn't there without a reload). I have a Logitech QuickCam for Notebooks Pro, which shows up as in PCC > Hardware > Look at and configure the hardware under Unknown/Others > (null) as Vendor ID 0x046d and Device ID 0x08c3 (046d:08c3). I've tried installing several packages via Synaptic but so far, no luck: the video options in Skype still indicate no devices are installed.
No luck with dkms-qc-usb, which is not surprising, I guess, given that my device ID is not listed in the package description. dkms-uvcvideo and dkms-qc-usb-messenger didn't work either.
Some people seem to have had luck with a spca5xx driver. I tried dkms-gspcav1, which seemed like a good bet given some Googling suggesting that this was the way to go if using a kernel as recent as mine. Still no luck.
I see some references to an issue in which this webcam will not work with pwc-kmp (see http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpackman.links2linux.org%2Finstall%2Fpwc-kmp&ei=xTdXSMjBI5KOsAPjloCgDg&usg=AFQjCNH_-5xQt4CPBx__YRwinpe8TGT1Ig&sig2=EPXMXrsLKwf68tA-SN7KJQ).
I found an article discussing the headaches of webcams with Linux (http://www.linux.com/feature/118896). I thought perhaps I needed to do additional steps, like that modprobe stuff. But the output from Synaptic makes it seem like the package was in fact added to the kernel.
I'm a little less optomistic that it's even possible to get this webcam working after reading this: http://www.quickcamteam.net/documentation/faq/logitech-webcam-linux-usb-incompatibilities. Then again, there are clearly people who have gotten this device ID to work (http://www.coursevector.com/linuxcamera/).
Now I'm trying an old crappy LabTec camera. I plugged it in, opened PCC, and it automatically detected it! Interestingly, it sees it as a Logitech -- 046d:0870 -- and it's listed under Webcam > QuickCam Express. What I don't know is whether it would have been detected had I not installed those packages. It's seen by Skype as "Logitech QuickCam USB (/dev/video0)". Unfortunately Skype crashes when I make a video call with it.
After a reboot, it's no longer crashing, but (a) the transmitted picture is an unrecognizable mass of colored pixels, and (b) the video from the other machine's camera is no longer being drawn (it was showing up just fine before even though the Armada was not transmitting video). I tried uninstalling all the webcam packages I added and reinstalled dkms-qc-usb (which, given its description, seemed the best bet). I ran Skype, and just before it crashed, I saw a clear image from the other computer's webcam and no image from my own. Rebooting.
Now Skype is crashing as soon as the call connects (granted, I have my MacBook set to automatically send/receive video). Ugh.
New approach: use a two-port USB 2.0 PCMCIA adapter: the Iogear GPU202. After plugging it in, I see it adding three entries under Unknown/Others in the PCC hardware utility: USB, USB, and Unknown device 00e1.The vendor:device is 1033:0035. I plugged in the LabTec but it doesn't seem to be showing up in hardware.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
