UPDATE for v.3.2: for TC w/gui, just use the appbrowser to install “wicd-“x.xx (just search for 'wicd'). This supports a ton of wifi cards with no major configuration. Once it installs, run as root “wicd-start” to start the daemon. In your application (right-click) menu, click the “WicdWirelessConfiguration” or whatever it is called. A nice easy to understand gui window will be displayed, enter your wireless network particulars and you are good to go.

NOTE: If you are looking for general wifi help, you should start with Setting up Wifi. The package “wireless-2.6.29.1-tinycore” contains open source Atheros drivers, which should work with most cards making this howto redundant. On the other hand, if you want to try other Atheros drivers these instructions will be helpful.

This short howto is based upon a forum conversation amongst Roberts, Svensko, and other users ca. Jan 2009.

This page summarizes how they installed modules for an Atheros-based card, and how they set up TC to automagically load the modules so that you don't have to manually set up your card on reboot.

The Atheros wireless drivers are not open source, so you have two options when using an Atheros card:

1. Use ndiswrapper around your windows .inf file
2. Use the madwifi open source replacements

To do either one, you'll need to:

• Get/install the wireless extensions from the repository (wireless_tools.tcel, wireless-x.x.x.tcem)
• Download a few other things (read each howto)
• use the terminal to glue it all together

Since you're reading this, we'll assume you have access to a working internet connection.

1. Get the ndiswrapper extension (ndiswrapper.tcem) from the tce repository, and install/mount that. 2. Find/download the Atheros Windows driver and unzip it somewhere useful like ~/atheros/. 3. Use ndiswrapper to fake the driver using something like

4. Then install ndiswrapper as a module

You can check to see if modprobe worked by using lsmod. You should end up with a working card called wlan0. You can check/set your wireless connections with iwconfig:

Ideally, that's it.

The madwifi drivers have to be compiled for your specific Linux build. Rebuild them, then install the new module:

1. Get the current madwifi drivers and unzip them somewhere practical. You can use wget with:

2. Get/install compiletc.tce and linux-headers-x.x.x.tce from the repository. Check your md5sums if you have trouble!

3. Rebuild the modules (doesn't take long on a Pentium III 1 GHz):

make make install #sudo if you have access errors

4. Install the newly-created module:

modprobe ath_pci #sudo if necessary

5. Set up the control panel:

• Turn on DHCP in the control panel
• Set Netcardconfig via the control panel (ath0, name servers if you have them, save config, exit)

6. Finally, run /opt/ath0.sh:

That should be it.

Tiny Core may boot faster than some cards can handle - they need time to self-initialize on reboot. You can read about that in the forum.

For the examples above, you can ask Tiny Core to automagically initialize your connection on reboot. Once your connection works:

1. Add lib/modules/2.26.x-tinycore/net to .filetool.lst. You can do this at the command line, or use the menu item Tools→Add to Filetool. 2. Set up depmod/modprobe to run on reboot. Just add a couple lines to the top of bootlocal.sh using an editor:

modprobe ath_pci

3. Check that the last line of bootlocal.sh reads opt/ath0.sh.

That should be it. Reboot and try it out. If no luck, first check to see if the modules reloaded (use lsmod). Also try running ath0.sh to reestablish your connection.