Laymanspeak: This is a USB device that provides wireless connectivity on a desktop/laptop. How to include support for this on Linux and what steps to take are explained here.
- USB Dongle with ID 1737:0077. Black colour version 3. http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WUSB54GC
- This is assumed to be the rt2870 chip.
- Uses the rt2x00usb driver by default in Ubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11. This does not work. The activity light does not come on either. The machine reports a wifi0 interface but cant scan/etc
- Had to manually install the firmware rt2870.bin in the /lib/firmware directory. Activity light glows but cannot connect.
- Staging drivers in the Fedora 11 kernel (drivers maintained/contributed by individual companies) are old and did not work. They are version 1 of the ralink source.
- Downloaded the 2870 chip drivers from ralinktech http://web.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html. The particular source being http://www.ralinktech.com.tw/data/drivers/2009_0820_RT2870_Linux_STA_V2.2.0.0.tar.bz2. This did not work either.
- Read up somewhere that this actually is the RT3070 chipset and the driver being http://www.ralinktech.com.tw/data/drivers/2009_0525_RT3070_Linux_STA_v2.1.1.0.bz2. This driver as per the documentation only works uptil 2.6.29 kernel. It compiled on the Fed 11 machine and creates an ra0 interface. Changes required are: Include the USB vend_id/prod_id in the USB definitions file of the ralinktech source and enable support for NetworkManager in the config file.
- This setup works for me but I believe there are problems for hidden SSID networks.
