Getting the Zyxel ZyAir G-302v2 802.11bg wireless card to work on Ubuntu 6.06

From Julian Yap

In May 2006, I bought a really cheap wireless card, the Zyxel ZyAir G-302v2 802.11b+g for a Linux machine. After rebates it only cost $10.

I got it to work under Ubuntu 6.06, kernel 2.6.15-23-386, ndiswrapper 1.8.

Make sure you remove acx Kernel module as this conflicts and does not work. Next Ubuntu release with latest acx Kernel module will probably work.

Additional notes:

I got emailed asking for more of an explanation so here it is:

Extra kernel modules are in the directory:

/lib/modules/2.6.15-23-386/

Where 2.6.15-23-386 represents the kernel you are currently running. Type in 'uname -r' at the prompt to be sure what kernel you are runnning.

The acx kernel module is located in:

/lib/modules/2.6.15-23-386/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/acx/acx.ko

As this kernel module detects the ZyXEL card, but does not actually work with the card, it conflicts with the working ndiswrapper solution. Hopefully in future Ubuntu releases the acx kernel module will work fine for the card and ndiswrapper won't need to be used.

So just delete the acx kernel module file and load the driver using ndiswrapper and your supplied CDs. You may need to use some other utilities such as 'cabextract' to extract the Windows driver files from the CDs. I can't recall what I did but it should be documented on the ndiswrapper site.

Additional notes, 20090828

I recently upgraded the machine to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, running 2.6.24-24-generic and ndiswrapper 1.9.

The card still works but unfortunately not natively with the base OS.

In this case, remove the acx.ko driver now located:

/lib/modules/2.6.24-24-generic/ubuntu/wireless/acx

I followed these notes to install it: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper