The card is coming with some drivers for linux, on the box is mentioned that it has support for Mac OS, Windows x64 Edition, Linux Debian, Fedora, Redhat and Suse.. I was not able to install their drivers on my computer, I have the feeling that something is wrong with their default drivers and I decided to use the drivers which you can download here.

“rt2×00 Project” is a development effort to provide free, stable and feature rich Linux drivers for wireless 802.11b/g/i cards based on the following Ralink chipsets: rt2400, rt2500, rt2570, rt61 and rt73.

So, the steps are here:

1. prepare the kernel first:

# cd /usr/src/linux
# make mrproper
# make cloneconfig
# make modules_prepare


2. Unpack the archive which you just download it somewhere on your hdd:

# tar -zxvf rt61-cvs-daily.tar.gz

3. change the current directory:

# cd rt61-cvs-2008032308/Module

4. compile and install the module:

# make
# make install

Now if everything is fine, you can see if you have the drivers installed:

# ifconfig -a
# iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
vmnet1 no wireless extensions.
vmnet8 no wireless extensions.

For the last two commands you have to look after wlan0 or ra0 device. If you still don’t have them (like in my case) try:

# modprobe rt61

If you run again the command iwconfig you will see now the device:

# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
vmnet1 no wireless extensions.
vmnet8 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 RT61 Wireless ESSID:”" Nickname:”"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Bit Rate=54 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Link Quality=0/100 Signal level:-121 dBm Noise level:-143 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
Now you are ready to configure your wi-fi card with yast, so type yast2 at the command prompt, and configure it.

At this point the card will work only (in my case it did) if I disable the SECURITY on my router and if I will set NO-Encryption for Autentification Mode in Yast. I don’t like this, I want to use WPA, so here is a nice and small script which will do the work:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Script to configure Edimax EW-7128G Wireless Lan PCI Adapter
# to work with WPA mode

iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
iwpriv wlan0 set AuthMode=WPAPSK
iwpriv wlan0 set EncrypType="TKIP"
iwconfig wlan0 essid "YOUR_ESSID" # change here
iwpriv wlan0 set WPAPSK="YOUR_PASSPHRASE" # change here


Now everything is working, I hope that this small howto is useful also for you, so please let a comment if it is working or if you have some problems with it.

My computers are here. For Amilo notebook I had already a PCMCIA card “Netgear WG511T” which is working fine on Windows XP, FreeBSD and Linux, Vaio notebook come with an integrated wifi card, I have installed on it Vista and I don’t have problems with the wireless card, so what I needed it was a PCI/USB wireless card for the desktop computer which has to work with Linux, Windows and also *BSD operating system and also a wireless router.

Surfing on the internet, reading opinions and different forums, I decided to buy a Linksys WRT54G wireless broadband router, maybe in the future I will try to install  linux on it (openwrt or something similar), and as PCI card I took Edimax EW-7128G wireless adapter which it seems that is working fine with Linux, Windows and FreeBSD/OpenBSD.

The router was very easy to set up and is working fine. I had some problems in installing the PCI wireless card on my Opensuse 10.3 box, finally it is working, I will write here a short tutorial in the next post.

I am really happy with my new wireless network.