wireless…finally

after 3 days of troubleshooting/researching/backtracking, i finally have my linux laptop running wireless. just when i was minutes away from giving up and condemning computers all together, i found the root of my problem. it actually started when i tried to configure my wlan files through KDE (so that i could open up several terminals and not have to worry about losing scrollback). the only problem was that X refused to load saying that it couldn’t find my mouse. funny, it was working yesterday, the only difference was i didn’t have my wireless card plugged in. so i did a “cat /dev/psaux” and got a message saying the device was busy. hmmm… i unplugged the wlan card and tried to get output from /dev/psaux. success. there was apparently some kind of hardware conflict. so with /dev/psaux working, i launched into X, and checked /proc/interrupts. my mouse device was using IRQ 12. exited out of X, plugged in the wlan card, and checked /proc/interrupts again. IRQ 12. a-ha!!. so i modified /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to exclude that IRQ, restarted the PCMCIA runlevel script, and bingo, i got an IP from my router. argh. i spent the last 3 days going over all the related config files with a fine-toothed comb only to find out that they were all correct in the first place and that it was an IRQ conflict that decided to mess with me. so, i think i have everything i need in this mobile linux box of mine. sound works. dvd playback works. wireless works. i’ll compose a writeup on how i did all this “soon” ™.