edimax wifi ew-7318Sg on ubuntu (newbie)

[breephd]

hello everyone. i am a linux ubuntu newbie. i have an old ibm intellistation, pentium 4, 1.6MHz, 384 ram. i have installed ubuntu version 9. the pc only had 2 usb 1.1 ports, so i added an nec usb 2.0 pci card with 4 ports. i also have an ethernet card - and when i plug in the internet cable - i get the internet. recently, i plugged in an edimax wifi dongle. nothing seems to happen. i have tried to install the windows driver with the ndwsrapper prgram. but to no avail. it has a linux driver, and i am not sure if i properly installed that. i did install a "device manager" program - and when i click on my usb stuff it says there is insufficient power to power the usb wifi device,. however, i am using a usb hub (off of the new pci card), so it must have enough power. and in any case, when i plug in my samsung k-5 it allows me to transfer music file sto the desktop. so i know the usb has power... i have tried to plug the edimax into the old usb 1.1 port. still it doesnt work. any ideas?

[breephd]

a few hours later. and several google searches...

there is something peculiar about this pc as well. there are no usb pots in the front. and so, i have been reading that perhaps my cd-rom or some device is actually drawing too much power? and this might be drawing enough away from the new pci-usb 2.0 card that i installed?

but i am also using a powered usb hub?! so that would somehow mean that something is hogging up all the power supply power?

when i look at the power supply, there are a lot of cables coming out, and many of them are not attached to anything.

i have also read of people not having this issue with earlier distributions, but then they switch to 9.04 and the problem comes up.

so, am i dealing with a power issue? or with an ubuntu 9.04 issue?

how do i know if the driver for the usb wifi dongle is installed?

there was a brief moment when i thought i saw that the usb dongle was getting sufficient power. but when i went to check it again in device manager, the same "insufficient power" message came back...

should i unplug the cd rom and see if i get more power to the usb card?

can a cd-rom and a hdd really draw most/all the power from the power supply?


the answer i think was that the wifi usb dongle was not properly installed and working thru the ubuntu os. i found help at this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7762896#post7762896