Hi, this is a guide I decided to write after buying and installing a Linksys WUSB54GC wireless USB adapter. The guide is very simple.
What you need to get this device going is to install ndiswrapper and the driver. You can use the driver attached to this post (or you can go to Linksys official web-site, download the driver (not the Vista one), unpack it (I know that it is an EXE file, but you can still unpack it) and find the drivers in the Drivers folder – that’s exactly how I got the drivers I attached to this post).
Ok, now the installation procedure. Lets assume you unpacked the drivers into your home directory (~) – the should be three files:
- rt73.cat
- rt73.inf
- rt73.sys
1. Install ndiswrapper:
apt-get install ndiswrapper
2. Change the dir to where your driver files are located:
cd ~
3. Install the drivers:
ndiswrapper -i rt73.inf
ndiswrapper -m
ndiswrapper -mi
ndiswrapper -ma
4. Reboot. Now the device should start working – you can verify that by clicking on the nmapplet or by going to Administration->Network – it should be there and it should show you wireless networks. I got it working that way and it correctly shows the signal strength, connects nicely – works nicely.
Now, why I used ndiswrapper – before I installed and configured ndiswrapper the device was also present and it even showed me the wireless networks, but it did not connect to any network.
Jefim Borissov 
I am trying to follow the above directions however for 7.10 Ubuntu but it isn’t working. Can you perhaps send me totally detailed instructions on the process thanks.
works it on ubuntu 7.10 too?
Hmm… Didnät try that on Ubuntu 7.10, but I think it should work (95% sure that it works).
I tried that on 7.10 and it does
Ok, thanks, mate. I added 7.10 to the title of this post.
Anyone know if it works on 6.06 lts?
don’t you have to blacklist the old ubuntu drivers so they don’t get loaded? I’m a little new to ubuntu, but I read that in a few other guides about this adapter
an update: it seems to be working. after using your guide I had to reboot, uninstall the driver, reboot, reinstall the driver, reboot again, and “create new wireless network”. the new driver says the connection is ~17% weaker, but I’m getting my full 850k down now instead of being capped at 100.
seems to me that linux in general needs more standardization when it comes down to hardware/software interfacing. I don’t quite understand the need for packages. a little proprietary if you ask me. RPM and DEB should just be one format, since linux is just linux. I figure if devs worked more on auto-building source code than relying on packages and repositories, the linux community could unify and contend a little better with windows and their EXE format. not to mention making errors a little more consistent and easier to troubleshoot.
I will state that while I can’t even boot into an rpm-based distro on this pc, ubuntu runs “perfectly” (gives me some irq error at boot that doesn’t seem to affect anything). weird.. but for a free os that looks better than a $400 os, I can’t complain too much.
i do not know what you did wrong – you usually do not even need to restart to make those work. everything works without any problems. anyway, glad you got it working eventually.
And works it on ubuntu 8.04 ?? I think, it should, what do you think?
Jefim,
I used this procedure to get it working on Ubuntu 8.04. The only differences were that:
– I used the drivers off the CD which came with the device.
– “apt-get install ndiswrapper” didn’t work. It seems that the package has been split into two parts. Instead, I installed ndisgtk and that caused ndiswrapper* to be downloaded & installed as dependencies automatically.
Thanks a lot for showing the direction!
Abhik.
Always glad to help B)
Thanks !
I can’t figure out how to unpack the .exe file. Can you give me a clue?
atool doesn’t seem to work
Try using WinRAR – it unpacks the exe with no problems 🙂 Just right-click and “Extract here”
In step #3:
ndiswrapper -m
ndiswrapper -mi
ndiswrapper -ma
Comment:
Don’t do all three of those. Each one of those will write different things in /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper. The last two completely overwrite /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper effectively removing anything already there. The first one will still write its line in /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper if either of the other two have ready been run, but error messages will be produced recommending removal of the other lines. Do one, try connecting, and if it works then stop.
ok so i installed ndiswrapper off the cd and got the drivers extracted and i used the sudo ndiswrapper -i “name of driver” command in the terminal but its still not working and i cant get the wireless network drivers menu to come up or find it. do u think you could help me out???
Hey, did you actually do the “ndiswrapper -m” part? Reboot? Any errors or strange output (e.g. from ndiswrapper -i).
Hey, I really want to get the Drivers but when I click the link at the top called “Drivers for WUSB54GC” it is only a jpeg file? I can’t find the drivers at the official site either?
Sam, the file is a jpeg file only because WordPress does not allow a lot of file extensions here. So I had to rename the file into *.jpg. Do not worry – it is an archive (not an image) and will unpack w/o problems.
I tried to get this Linksys WUSB54GC adapter to work with Fedora 11 using the same procedure. It didn’t work for me. When I go into Administration/Network, the device is not available to select. Has anyone had any luck with this?
More info:
Linksys WUSB54GC-rev-3 has diferent chip set using driver RT2780. I did not get this to work with ndiswrapper. See the following link about a blog with information about installing the native driver provided by the chip manufacturer Ralink.
http://ajsais.blogspot.com/2009/11/linksys-wusb54gc-ver-3-usb-dongle-linux.html
I am still trying to get it to work but it’s not a dead end yet.
Thomas_P
Not that I am a quitter but UPS showed up today. I ordered a Sabrent 802.IIG PCI card for $15. It worked out of the box.
thomas_p
I’m trying to re-install a WUSB54GB adapter, but when I load the disk and follow the prompts, I’m told the rt73.sys is missing and needs to be installed. It’s shown on the disk, but doesn’t load. I think the disk might be damaged. Is there someplace I can find these files (rt73.cat; rt73.ins; rt73.sys), save them to my thumbdrive and take them to the PC we are trying to get working?
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