[ale] wireless card for laptop

[David S. Jackson]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 12:15:26PM -0400 Matthew Magee <mnmagee at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I wanted to get some recomendations from the list before I buy a wireless 
> PCMCIA card.
> 
> I need:
> 
> 16 bit card (no Cardbus)
> Works with Slackware 9.1
> Needs to be economical (I'm poor)
> 
>  So far I have come up with a netgear MA 401. Any other ideas?

You have to watch out for some of the popular cards, like the Netgear
ma401 and the linksys wpc11(?):  I think the netgear went to a
broadcom chipset (correct me if I'm confused) and the linksys went to
a realtek chipset.  So it's critical that you ensure that you have
the *older* prism2 chipset if you choose these cards.  The older,
well-supported prism2 chipset might be harder to find on these
popular cards.  (No difference between this radical chipset change is
noted anywhere on the box, except in a slight difference between the
version levels of the card.)

I believe the Orinoco is still a prism2.  There's a compatibility
list at: http://www.tuxmobile.com/pcmcia_linux.html.  The Linux-wlan
project contains a couple of compatibility lists too:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Wireless.html
and
http://www.wireless.org.au/~jhecker/atmeldrv/usbtable.html

Also, emperorlinux (emperor-linux.com) here locally specializes in
linux laptops.  They can tell you exactly what works and what doesn't
on many popular laptop brands.  They sell PCMCIA wireless stuff.

-- 
David S. Jackson                                dsj at dsj.net
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an
approaching train.