[Nottingham] wireless cards

[.waffle]

They were, indeed, the days! NetBSD on my A1200 was an acheivement!

.waffle

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee" <nospamlee@astarix.co.uk>
To: <nottingham@mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 6:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Nottingham] wireless cards


> I've had limited success with the DWL-520+ cards in linux (mandrake),
> trouble is, it's unstable, and will panic the kernel after some time.
> It's only a binary driver too, which is horrble, so I can't even attempt
> to fix it myself...:-( . I think TI and the big chip makers are in
> leauge with microsoft, they wont ublish there chipset specs so we can
> see the peeks and pokes of a chip set, i.e. what regeisters set the
> channel, speed of card etc etc. It's very annoying indeed...if there is
> on thing that's going to stop linux getting main stream driver support,
> is.....mainstream drivers support.
>
> Saying that, I am getting really good transfer rates with the dlink
> cards.... there PBCC encoding really does work well, I also hear that
> dlink have a firmware upgrade to take the chip set to 44 megs PBCC, not
> bad at all for a 40 quid card....I'm still looking for this
> firmware..could be vapour ware....who knows...
>
> You may say 'don't buy dlink', but when the actual base chip
> manufacturer won't release specs, what are you to do? I feel we will see
> more of this driverless problem in the future...
>
> I've tried looking for a Prism2 based PCI card with detachable atenna
> and good receive senstivity, and working wireless statistics collection
> (snr etc etc)...so far I've not had much look, the new belkin cards are
> prism2, but I've having trouble tracking them down, as for price, who
> knows...probably silly money.
>
> So..if you want a cheap pci 802.11b card, in linux...you can't :-(,well
> not relyably anyway... please correct me if I'm wrong.. (I wish I was)
>
> As for 802.11g and 802.11a, I guess were going to have to wait a year or
> two before we get drivers for it, I see dlink are doing a small wireless
> bridge that you just connect to by ethernet, it's more expensive, but it
> now worries with sub standard linux drivers. If you need the best card,
> then it's got to be the cisco pci card..it's a very sexy card indeed,
> and that's reflected (sadly) in the price.
>
> Long live the amiga.....:-)....those were the days...
>
> Cheers,
> Lee
>
> On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 16:57, .waffle wrote:
> > Hi there! Whatever you do, do not buy a card with a chipset by Texas
> > Instruments. I bought my cards back in October, and the Linux drivers
"soon"
> > became Linux drivers not available. How to tell what chipset? Any card
that
> > goes faster than 11Mbps (ie, the 22Mbps or 54Mbps cards). Mine is a
D-Link
> > DWL-520+ but if you see the DWL-520 (no plus) then grab it! It has
> > manufacturer supported drivers. Also, any card with Prism 2/Orinoco
support,
> > although chances are you WON'T find this information on the web site of
the
> > vendors... well, easily at least. Finally, if at all possible, stick to
PCI
> > only, as they are:
> >
> > a) Cheaper.
> > b) Apparently have a better transfer rate due to less connections.
> > c) Normally have better antennae.
> >
> > Any more info can typically be found in the forum FAQ's of the OpenForum
at
> > ArsTechnica.com
> >
> > .waffle
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Martin Garton" <martin@wrasse.demon.co.uk>
> > To: <nottingham@mailman.lug.org.uk>
> > Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 4:33 PM
> > Subject: [Nottingham] wireless cards
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Can anyone recommend a pci 802.11-b card to use with linux?  I
currently
> > > have a pcmcia card in a isa-pcmcia bridge card, but I want to put an
epia
> > > based machine on the wireless network and it's pci only.  I have heard
> > > about pci-pcmcia cards also.  Does anyone have any experience of
these?
> > >
> > > --
> > > Martin.
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Nottingham mailing list
> > > Nottingham@mailman.lug.org.uk
> > > http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/nottingham
> > >
> >
> >
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>
>
>
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