UPDATE: Attached.
Also see: https://sites.google.com/site/maemo4repo/home

Success!

This thread is about using an external USB wireless card with a Realtek RTL8187 chipset (Alfa 500mW b/g or knock-off) with a N8X0 (N800 or N810).

There are a few old threads such as:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=30542
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=30471
However, I felt rather than bumping an old thread, I would create a new one and post it in General for the greatest benefit of Nokia Internet Tablet users.

I would like to start off by thanking the following users (they did all the work!): paulkoan, qwerty12 and pupnik. Without pupnik requesting the drivers, qwerty12 compiling and paulkoan adding a startup script and so kindly sending me the driver, this would not be possible.

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I'm hosting the archive file with the compiled driver and such:

http://www.box.net/os2008/1/38267044/393254972

perhaps someone can "package" it and upload to Maemo Extras or even nudge team Nokia to add it to a SSU (if we ever get another for N8X0).
I whipped together a quick readme file which I included in the archive. Edit: Updated the readme (re-upped the .zip)
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Unzip the file, chmod a+x the script netup, plug in your set up, lsusb, and install wirelesss-tools and bash and
aircrack-ng and libnl.

I have a knock-off of the Alfa 500mW that I purchased at Defcon for $25.


connected to a y-cable (in this case a male full-size [to N8X0] split to a male mini [to usb device] and a male full-size [to power])



with the "to N8X0" end connected to a male micro=>full-size female USB OTG cable.

Now I should mention the voltage issue. The NITs don't output 5V over usb because the USB host mode is unofficial and uses On-The-Go which is meant for things like flash drives and keyboards. Harddrives, wifi cards, certain memory card readers, etc. may use more voltage than the N8X0 gives (which is far less than 5V). A powered hub (a non-AC one is rare) or y-cable attached to a laptop's usb port, usb => AC adapter, or a 5V lithium usb battery can compensate.

For all that talk about wiring external antenna connectors, why not leave the stock antenna alone? (;

and


# lsusb recognizing the device


Don't forget you can attach other usb devices too (;


I'd also like to mention that paulkoan's script shouldn't be modified. What I mean by that is that if the device is not connected (with proper voltage to be recognized) then /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1/bConfigurationValue will not exist. It is autogenerated. Instead in /sys/bus/usb/devices you will only see the folders 1-1:1.0 and usb1. usb1 contains a file called bConfigurationValue. I stupidly altered his script to echo to that file. This causes some weird issues - freezes xterm and some usb chargers seem to actually draw power from the N810, oh and it doesn't trick the N810 to allow the use of a y-cable.