DWA-131 Ver b Frm/w 2.00

**wadelius** · March 5th, 2013

So now I am officially giving up on this device, just cannot get it to work together with graphics. What I did to almost get it to work was:

Install kernel 3.8.0-030800-generic as instructed here: http://handytutorial.com/install-lin...u-12-10-12-04/
Download compat-drivers from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/ker...s/stable/v3.8/
Open compat-drivers-3.8-1/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl8192cu/sw.c

Go to line 356 and change

Code:

{RTL_USB_DEVICE(0x2001, 0x3309, rtl92cu_hal_cfg)}, /*D-Link-Alpha*/

to

Code:

{RTL_USB_DEVICE(0x2001, 0x330d, rtl92cu_hal_cfg)}, /*D-Link-Alpha*/

Go to compat-drivers root directory and install from source with
Code:
```
make && sudo make install
```

After rebooting and starting the recovery mode, start network (that takes quite some time). Then select root console and play aroud with modprobe, iwcofig and iwlist. But now I am giving up and going to try to find another usb adapter.

Do you have any suggestions on usb-wifi-dongles that just work?

**chili555** · March 5th, 2013

Do you have any suggestions on usb-wifi-dongles that just work?

I do not, however the question has been asked many times here. A quick search will find many suggestions.

**djonathan** · March 13th, 2013

I have not messed around with the compat driver, but adding the correct VID/PID to the current staging driver doesn't do it. Might be something about reading the eeprom...

Meanwhile, I know this isn't the ideal solution, but to see the DWA-131 revB work, go to www.realtek.com.tw, navigate to the download page for the RTL8192CU, and get the version 3.4.4_4749 driver. Even it needs to be patched with the 0x330d PID.

I think the firewall is preventing my patch upload, so here it is:

diff -Naur hal/rtl8192c/usb/usb_halinit.c new/hal/rtl8192c/usb/usb_halinit.c
--- hal/rtl8192c/usb/usb_halinit.c 2012-07-30 05:51:05.000000000 -0700
+++ new/hal/rtl8192c/usb/usb_halinit.c 2013-03-13 11:35:25.266566979 -0700
@@ -3786,6 +3786,9 @@
pHalData->CustomerID = RT_CID_DLINK;
else if((pHalData->EEPROMVID == 0x2001) && (pHalData->EEPROMPID == 0x330a))
pHalData->CustomerID = RT_CID_DLINK;
+ // DWA-131 revB test
+ else if((pHalData->EEPROMVID == 0x2001) && (pHalData->EEPROMPID == 0x330d))
+ pHalData->CustomerID = RT_CID_DLINK;
break;
case EEPROM_CID_WHQL:
/*

diff -Naur os_dep/linux/usb_intf.c new/os_dep/linux/usb_intf.c
--- os_dep/linux/usb_intf.c 2012-07-30 05:51:05.000000000 -0700
+++ new/os_dep/linux/usb_intf.c 2013-03-13 11:34:22.626566387 -0700
@@ -137,6 +137,8 @@
{USB_DEVICE(0x2001, 0x3307)},//D-Link - Cameo
{USB_DEVICE(0x2001, 0x330A)},//D-Link - Alpha
{USB_DEVICE(0x2001, 0x3309)},//D-Link - Alpha
+ // DWA-131 revB test
+ {USB_DEVICE(0x2001, 0x330d)},//DWA-131 revB
{USB_DEVICE(0x0586, 0x341F)},//Zyxel - Abocom
{USB_DEVICE(0x7392, 0x7822)},//Edimax - Edimax
{USB_DEVICE(0x2019, 0xAB2B)},//Planex - Abocom

**Pyppe** · March 28th, 2013

Thanks so much djonathan for the diff. Made my day.

**revelias** · May 14th, 2013

Did you ever get the DWA-131 B to work? If so could you post exactly how you did it?

**bladernr** · May 22nd, 2013

FWIW, I just bought one of these tonight, also mistakenly thinking it would work out of the box. Apparently, the older rev. worked fine, but this new rev has ... issues.

Following this thread (read all 5 pages) I discovered a couple things.
First, keep in mind, I'm running Raring with the latest updates. (3.8 kernel)
The system is an aging Thinkpad x201 with a Centrino-N onboard wireless device that is flaky.

So following the setup instructions for using ndiswrapper in this thread was a disaster. The ndiswrapper bits worked fine, however, loading ndiswrapper caused a kernel panic and a dead machine.

So I figured this out:

1: on inserting the RWA-131, Raring loads the rt2x00* drivers (rt2800.ko, etc)
2: this loaded when you load the ndiswrapper module causes an instant kernel panic and dead GUI, with only a console visible showing the stack trace.
3: blacklisting everything in /lib/modules/<KERNEL VERSION>/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rt2x00 directory first still resulted in a kernel panic, but it took slightly longer.
4: It's possible that by blacklisting that module the kernel is automatically trying to load some other Ralink driver as a fallback.

I didn't bother hunting down module conflicts however. On my raring system, the following two steps were all that I needed.

modprobe rtl8192cu
echo "2001 330D" | tee /sys/bus/usb/drivers/rtl8192cu/new_id

After doing that, iwconfig showed the DWA-131 as a device:

Code:

wlan3     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"HIDDEN"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: E0:91:F5:XX:XX:XX   
          Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=63/70  Signal level=-47 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:113   Missed beacon:0

and it scanned just fine:

Code:

wlan3     Scan completed :          Cell 01 - Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
                    Channel:1
                    Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                    Quality=61/70  Signal level=-49 dBm  
                    Encryption key:on
                    ESSID:"HIDDEN"

And network-manager shows it side by side my failing Intel Centrino-N wifi card.

So I can remove iwlwifi and iwldvm and happily use hte RWA-131 now.

I am guessing that at some point in the near future, the module will be updated to include the ID for this new device revision and a future kernel update for Raring will include that.

So I just have a simple shell script to run those commands whenever I need to use the DWA-131 dongle. When I'm at home, I use ethernet, so it's not necessary.

**Mark_Manning** · October 19th, 2013

Hey Chili,
I know this post is several months old but I found that A) you have answered a ton of questions on here and have a wealth of knowledge B) I found myself in a similar situation as Revelias, Over the last year I have learned to dislike Ndiswrapper because at every patch upgrade it seems to die. So I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 13.04 and Ndiswrapper died again and I had trouble reinstalling and getting my D-Link DWA-131 working again. I came back to work on it today and after uninstalling NDiswrapper I upgraded to 13.10 "Saucy Salamander". Everything looked clean in the lsusb and dmesg but the device was not coming to life. As I read your trick with "echo "2001 330D" | sudo tee /sys/bus/usb/drivers/rtl8192cu/new_id I thought your trick just might work for me but all the lsusb and dmeg result referred to the device with a lower case "d"; "2001 330d" so I tried that and it immediately came to life. Thanks for all your help to the community and I hope this helps someone.