rt61 edimax pci wifi card intermittent connection problems

[Jonah]

hi i have an edimax pci wifi card that is rt61 chipset. problem is i am only connected five mins or whatever at at time, i get random connection loss, it's intermittent, sometimes it just comes back sometimes it's off for ages. i know it's just the ubuntu box cos i have another wireless computer that works fine.

i also know that this card doesn't perform well with shipped drivers it seems on other distros also. i had this problem on fedora and also on elive. what i did on fedora though was to simply remove the shipped rt61 driver in package manager and install the rt61 legacy cvs driver found here: http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/rt61-cvs-daily.tar.gz

that driver fixed the problems and was as solid as rock on fedora, really cool. however i tried this on gutsy amd64 (which is now what i am using) and bang!! it completely screwed my machine, i don't know if i was supposed to uninstall a conflicting driver (couldn't find anything install called rt61 etc in synaptic).

on rebooting i had no connection at all, them swirly lights near clock not lit and blue swirl just circling, nothing, terminal wouldn't open, certain apps wouldn't open, total mess, logout and shut down buttons wouldn't work. really screwed it. after much time on ubuntu irc and with no one being able to help some guy in the debian irc told me how to delete the rt61.ko file i'd installed into lib/modules - i had to do this from the recovery console...

anyway it's one bug enough that my connection is intermittent, but is it also a bug that i can't fix this problem by installing the better driver from serialmonkey?? i would prefer to use this driver as i know from fedora it really works very well.

can you update the rt61 drivers in ubuntu please or add this legacy one in synaptic as an alternative. or just fix the broken one it's already using. thanks.

now i've deleted what i installed my system is back up and working but again internet keeps going off and then coming back. thanks.

[Jonah (jonah)]

ok i blacklisted the 3 modules built in kernel and installed the rt61 legacy driver from serialmonkey and now internet is reliable as should be, also wireless signal strength is better too.

roaming mode no longer works though so had to do manual network configuration.

here's what i did with help on forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=600554

it would be great if someone could fix this in ubuntu as i've been through hell and back and it would be a shame if others have to also.