Huzaa, it works!
I spent alot of time trying to get Ubuntu (both dapper and edgy) to work with the wireless adapter in my Averatec 3700 laptop/notebook. The rt2500 802.11b/g chipset is well supported in more recent linux distributions so I was depressed when I ran into this snag. It would be so slow that it appeared to be locked up. I had to leave the Ralink rt2500 module blacklisted(/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist) so that it would not load automatically and use the cat5 network connection instead.
As many now know, wireless connections should either be tunnelled through ssh or a vpn or you should be using WPA with a long key. WEP is not secure. I tried various USB 802.11g adapters, a few of the 802.11b pc card adapters I had sitting around and was prepared to tunnel my connection with ssh over an open access point since none of them supported WPA.
I recently searched again for Averatec 3700, rt2500 and Ubuntu and found users of other Averatec models suggesting adding option “DisableIRQ” to the “Device” section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Sure enough it solved the problem.
This was the one that solved the problem for me (posted Dec 2006):
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=312821
But I also noticed this one which had been posted back in July (too bad I didn’t notice it back then):
http://opalescent.ca/averatec_3700-ed1.html
So now the built-in wireless adapter in my laptop is working with WPA and Ubuntu. I have also found some PCI rt2500 based 802.11g wireless cards for my desktops for a reasonable price ($20ea) as well.
