Installation of SMCWUSB-G Wifi ndiswrapper

Here I'll describe how to configure the wifi usb stick from SMC model SMCWUSB-G.

I had to set my pclinuxos desktop to wireless LAN because of a new wifi router that I just got for IPTV which should sit besides the IPTV decoder, far away from my desktop. For this I purchased locally a wifi adapter, the one they had, the SMCWUSB. This was a mistake because I should have looked first for an adapter well known to work with pclinuxos, ideally with native linux drivers.

I run in a lot of problems with this adapter, there is no native driver, so only option seems to be using the ndiswrapperm, but it isn't a easy tasks and after many trials (one full working day) this seems to be the way to make this hardware to work properly on pclinuxos.

Instructions:
1.- Install the lastest ndiswrapper using the Package Manager. DO NOT download the lastest ndiswrapper from internet it requires a kernel higher than the one in pclinuxos (at least on June 2008).
2.- Copy to a local folder the drivers from the SMC installatino CD or download from SMC site.
3.- In the local folder where you copied the drivers make a backup of the driver for xp with:
mv smcwguxp.sys smcwguxp.sys.bak
4.- rename the windows 2000 driver so it looks like the xp driver with:
cp smcwgu2k.sys smcwguxp.sys
5.- install the driver with
ndiswrapper -i smcwgu.inf
6.- Open the Administration Center -> Network & Internet
7.- Make sure that there is no wlan device installed. If necessary delete any wlan device using the tool "Delete a network interface" in the Administration Center.
8.- Add a new device using "Set up a new network interface..."
9.- when asked for the type select "Wireless"
10.- when asked for select ndiswrapper and then ndiswrapper for smcwgu
11.- your smcwusbg hardware should now be detected and it should start scanning for wifi networks.
12.- configure your wifi network as usual (SSID, security, etc)

The mistakes that I've done that you should avoid: installing latest version of ndiswrapper from sourceforge, or in general installing an ndiswrapper different to that downloaded with the Package Manager, using the xp driver on the smc CD (strange but true), trying to use the Zydas driver zd1211, zd1211b or zd1211rw (even though they should have worked with the Accton chipset on this SMCWUSBG), this applied to both the Zydas driver from internet and the zydas driver from Package Manager.