[Novices] I am very new at this so...

[Thom Durfee]

Adam and Bruce,

> > This is what lspci reports the device as?

running lspci -v  I found the following among the many items listed for the 
PCI controller regarding the wireless card.

2:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN 
Controller (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Compaq Computer Corporation: Unknown device 00e7
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 32, IRQ 10
        Memory at d2004000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
        Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

>Also, does the wireless NIC show up in YAST -> Network Card?
> If so, what does it say?

Under Yast -> Network Card I found:

Wireless card using kernal module p80211.o  DHCP

> Not all 802.11g cards are supported _native_ in Linux.
> But that can usually be worked around by using the ndiswrapper Linux
> package and the Windows driver for the card (which a quick google search
> seems to imply for your model laptop).  NDISwrapper can sometimes be
> difficult to get working (but it can't hurt to try).  If you want easy,
> buy a cheap PCMCIA 802.11b that is supported natively in Linux.

I was figuring that Linux did not support the newer wireless card.  I would 
have no clue about NDISwrapper I have heard that it can be a real pain to 
setup.  Wouldn't you know that after going through all my junk after a recent 
move I think I sent to the landfill a perfectly working Lynksys 802.11b PCI 
card.  That is always my luck.

My wireless router does not broadcast the ssid and I use WEP encription.

> > What problems have you encountered installing MPlayer?  Have you tried
> > adding the pacman install source to Yast and installing it that way?
> > Was totally painless for me and it plays *everything*.  It is
> > frustrating that the whole multimedia thing is still such a mess.

Well, I downloaded and installed the RPM for libdvdcss2 package but I have no 
idea if it is working.  It certainly did not make either xine or kaffine work 
so someone suggested on the SUSE mail list that I download MPlayer.  I did 
that and upon install of the RPM it complained that the dependicies for the 
codex had failed.  I am assuming that means they need to be installed.   It 
listed about 10 of them (I do not remember which ones) and at that point I 
gave up.

I have no clue what the pacman source is.  I am new to all of this.  Sources 
seem to be a problem for me as I am always seeing "Installation Source not 
refreshed" error messages when running YAST -> Software Management  etc.  My 
downloads always go to /home/tdurfee and I have that setup in the YAST -> 
Installation Source.


> I recently posted a message on a KLUG list (members?) about how to
> install mplayer on SuSE 10.0 using YAST.

I searched the archives on the KLUG lists and did not see your post.  I will 
do a further search.

Thom