Ralink Adds RT5390 Support To Open WiFi Driver

[Thetargos]

I have experience with RT2500 devices only. One in a Toshiba Laptop I have, and previous to that I remember buying a couple of PCMCIA cards that sported that chipset. The one on my laptop is USB based, and with Fedora (since Fedora 8) it has worked delightfully. Sure enough, there are the signal problems that seem to plague these devices, and the occasional drop-out, which re-establishes itself either by turning off and then back on the device via the front-panel toggle slider or disconnecting from NM and then connecting back again. Other than that I've not had problems with these devices.

Granted these are older chips and I ignore what have Fedora and Red Hat developers done to the kernel and modules in order to get them to work so well (comparatively speaking). I have two other USB dongles (one from Marvell Semiconductor under the Zonet Brand), the other got it from a friend, but been unable to get it working, since I had not had time to mess with it... Just plugged it and seems to have an RT2810, no modules were loaded, so I think the system simply doesn't recognize the thing. Over the weekend I'll toy with the thing a bit.

[Panix]

I want to get a usb stick (wireless n) for my desktop so I took note of this thread.

I think all the wifi drivers for wireless n devices are in a current state of development and I wonder if any are of decent quality in Linux. Maybe Atheros? Note, I am talking about WIRELESS N USB devices. Ralink's recent drivers and chipset for wireless n usb devices are via the Ralink firmware, at least it is for Debian-based distos. Probably the others as well.

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/rt2800usb

Looks like WIP to me.

I was considering a realtek device but it also sounds really sketchy and WIP if not worse than Ralink although there's firmware to be installed as well. They're trying to isolate and use certain drivers and it sounds like it's moving along better as before you had to blacklist certain drivers.

I wanted a realtek wireless usb adapter (n) because there's a lot of choices, cheap on ebay, including the nano kind which would be pretty useful I thought (if the antenna doesn't suck too bad).

But, this is getting a bit off topic? I think ralink is okay but it sounds like the quality of the drivers aren't the best. I think there's also more work needed to use these devices in other distros like OpenSUSE and Fedora but maybe users of those distros could comment if they have tried wireless n usb devices?

I think Atheros sounds like the easiest to use but I researched it and there's not a lot of choices for hardware that have that chipset if you want to use wireless n usb adapters. Also, no nano type choices for that chipset so far.

It depends what you want - which chipset, what kind of hardware, price, ease of use etc. etc. ???

[meklu]

After posting here, missing the most important issue that of massive connection drop out , i went looking for their drivers ( http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2 ) and got them working on my RT2070 stick (thanks to google and the Ubuntu forums that is):
*get RT8070/RT3070/RT3370 USB ( yep, for the newer ones actually ) and unpack
*run lsusb and take note of those two numbers of your wireless device:

[I]Bus 001 Device 004: ID [B]148f[/B]:[B]2070[/B] Ralink Technology, Corp.[/I]

*edit <ralink driver>\common\rtusb_dev_id.c and add yours if it's not listed there already:

[I]{USB_DEVICE(0x[B]148F[/B],0x[B]2070[/B])}, /* My stupid Ralink 2070 stick */[/I]

*make & make install as root
*blacklist these modules: rt2870sta, rt2x00lib, rt2x00usb, rt2800lib, rt2800usb
*add an alias: alias ra0 rt3070sta
*reboot and your new wireless device is named ra0

since now i write from memory maybe I'm missing something, do ask if is not working as it should

on my system now with this driver the connection works fine as the iPod connects instantly at any time and my USB conflict seems to work out better now as only one reconnection is enough

one tricky thing is that the driver is build with -DDBG ( see config.mk ) parameter meaning it spits some debug info into dmesg every other second, so far it looks like deleting the parameter makes the compilation fail

cheers

Well, I do have the stick working with the staging drivers but not the serialmonkey ones. I'm stuck with the 2.6.32 kernel because it's the latest one that actually has working RT2870STA. The serialmonkey ones just semi-work (drop the connection after the maximum of an hour or so) with 2.6.35 and 2.6.38. Oh, and I like to build the stuff into the kernel for some reason thus making me not want to use modules. Thanks for the help though.

[Licaon]

If only they got rt2800usb working with RT3070, I'd be happy. For now, I'll just have to live with 2.6.32 with the RT2870STA module.

After posting here, missing the most important issue that of massive connection drop out , i went looking for their drivers ( http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2 ) and got them working on my RT2070 stick (thanks to google and the Ubuntu forums that is):
*get RT8070/RT3070/RT3370 USB ( yep, for the newer ones actually ) and unpack
*run lsusb and take note of those two numbers of your wireless device:

[I]Bus 001 Device 004: ID [B]148f[/B]:[B]2070[/B] Ralink Technology, Corp.[/I]

*edit <ralink driver>\common\rtusb_dev_id.c and add yours if it's not listed there already:

[I]{USB_DEVICE(0x[B]148F[/B],0x[B]2070[/B])}, /* My stupid Ralink 2070 stick */[/I]

*make & make install as root
*blacklist these modules: rt2870sta, rt2x00lib, rt2x00usb, rt2800lib, rt2800usb
*add an alias: alias ra0 rt3070sta
*reboot and your new wireless device is named ra0

since now i write from memory maybe I'm missing something, do ask if is not working as it should

on my system now with this driver the connection works fine as the iPod connects instantly at any time and my USB conflict seems to work out better now as only one reconnection is enough

one tricky thing is that the driver is build with -DDBG ( see config.mk ) parameter meaning it spits some debug info into dmesg every other second, so far it looks like deleting the parameter makes the compilation fail

cheers

[meklu]

What about 3070?

If only they got rt2800usb working with RT3070, I'd be happy. For now, I'll just have to live with 2.6.32 with the RT2870STA module.

[ChrisS]

Of course you are right.

I was just daydreaming....

Sorry about that.

[mrugiero]

that they also do something about older chipsets from the rt2500 family.

I've (still) got two of them, one pci2500 and one usb2500. The pci wireless card did never work at all and still doesn't with even the most recent ubuntu kernels and the wireless signal strength for the usb card is just absurdly bad - if your computer is not sitting DIRECTLY next to your source, you do not get any signal at all. Leaving the room and the signal is gone.

I know the rt2500 chipsets are old, but compared to similar old ones from intel, dell and broadcom, I just can advice avoiding ralink chips if possible. Since I turned to Broadcom and Intel, the wireless is just as good as under windows.

I don't think a company would put resources in adapting old cards drivers to another infrastructure (which I think must be done to give the support in the open wifi driver), it is more probably that they just release the code of their original driver and some documentation, and then, hope that a hobbyist wants to give it support through the open wifi.

[ChrisS]

Well I seriously hope,

that they also do something about older chipsets from the rt2500 family.

I've (still) got two of them, one pci2500 and one usb2500. The pci wireless card did never work at all and still doesn't with even the most recent ubuntu kernels and the wireless signal strength for the usb card is just absurdly bad - if your computer is not sitting DIRECTLY next to your source, you do not get any signal at all. Leaving the room and the signal is gone.

I know the rt2500 chipsets are old, but compared to similar old ones from intel, dell and broadcom, I just can advice avoiding ralink chips if possible. Since I turned to Broadcom and Intel, the wireless is just as good as under windows.

[deanjo]

has anyone had a rock solid experience with PCI-E or PCI devices? I'd love to know if this isn't the status quo for Ralink.

I have had many ralink PCI cards. They have always been rock solid for me and gave me far greater range then any intel/atheros/broadcom card that I tried. I have even used a couple of them to establish a bridge over a city block (with a good external antenna).

[Stebs]

has anyone had a rock solid experience with PCI-E or PCI devices? I'd love to know if this isn't the status quo for Ralink.

No, the rt2860 (PCI i think) in my Netbook is not stable at all, often i have to reboot my Ubuntu 10.10, just to get wlan to work again after suspend. And still only 802.11g instead of 802.11n...
I doubt the situation will ever improve though (the device being relatively old now), in future i would never choose a ralink wlan device for use with linux, but sometimes you don't have a choice...