[ale] WiFi PC Card Market

[dad at datix.2y.net (David A. De Graaf)]

On Sun, Sep 25, 2005 at 06:56:18PM -0400, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> I was really hoping for something from the walk-in-and-buy-it world...

If you're interested in a USB plugin unit that works at 802.11b speed,
eg, 54 Mbit/s, I've recently bought a DLink DWL-G122 adapter, and am
using it with a DLink DI-524 wireless/wired router at the other end.
As far as I know this is the ONLY one of the small -b speed adapters
that do work with Linux.

There is no native driver for Linux - you must use the Windows driver
under ndiswrapper.  However, it seems to work well.

The measured transmission speed is in the neighborhood of 800,000.
Bytes/sec - substantially below 54 Mb/s (or ~6.75 MB/s) - even though
iwconfig reports the full 54 Mb/s capability.  I suspect this is due
to limitations of the USB port, but I don't know that for sure.

Anyway, it's a big improvement over the predecessor Belkin F5D6050
adapter that was only an 802.11b device.

More details can be found on my web page - www.datix.us, menu item
"Wireless upgrade".


> 
> 
> On Sun, 2005-09-25 at 15:37 -0400, Emil P. Man wrote:
> > Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> > 
> > >I'm needing to buy a PC Card Wifi adapter for my wife's laptop and I'm
> > >not up on the Linux-supportedness of the makes and models one would find
> > >in the typical Fry's, Circuit City, Best Buy, etc.  I have a prism54
> > >card for my own laptop that works fairly well, but it's not my
> > >understanding that I can get the FooBar 65X3342 card and assume it has
> > >the same chipset as the FooBar 65X3342 card from two years ago.
> > >
> > >  
> > >
> > I would just get on ebay and buy an older one.. pretty much guranteed to 
> > work. I have a netgear ma401 that is pretty well supported on linux. It 
> > uses the orinoco chipset and those are well developed modules on linux.
> > 
> > >I also have that classic problem that you can't really tell from the
> > >shrinkwrapped box just what chipset a Wifi card has, much less whether
> > >or not it's Linux-usable.
> > >
> > >Jeff

-- 
	David A. De Graaf    DATIX, Inc.    Hendersonville, NC
	dad at datix.2y.net     www.datix.us