[Ndiswrapper-general] SIS 163u based USB wireless adaptor

[P.C. C. <pc...@al...>]

Hi there,

I bought the TrendNet TEW-424UB usb wireless adaptor based on the 
information from the web that it has the zd1211 or realtek chipset.

The former has its own linux driver from Zydas and the later should work 
with ndiswrapper.

However the one I get is the b1 version, it is based on the SIS 163u 
chipsset. The windows driver can be found at:

http://www.trendware.com/asp/download_manager/list_subcategory.asp?SUBTYPE_ID=701#

The USB ID is 0457:0163 Silicon Integrated Systems Corp.

There are no linux drivers.

The windows XP driver found on the SIS site is the same as the one came 
with the stick or the one in the above website.

I tried to use ndiswrapper together with the sis163u XP driver but I had 
no success.

I managed to load ndiswrapper, create wlan0 and perform iwconfig on 
wlan0.  However it returned no scans and the stick stayed cool and dead 
(LED off). 

With ndiswrapper debug on,  I can see some activities in syslog 
otherwise the stick looked as if it was not powered on.   

Would there be something like a rf swith in this chipset?

There were no obvious error messages.  I have not tried to decode the 
debug messages though.

I am using ndiswrapper-1.3rc1 and running 2.6.12.5 kernel.  I've also 
tried 2.6.13-rc17 which has the v.18 wireless extension, but it did not 
help.
An AirLink AWLL3026, zd1211 based USB stick and the built-in ipw2200 
based wireless nic work fine on this machine with the same iw tools.

I wonder if anybody else has any luck with SIS 163u?

Regards,
P.C.