[NCLUG] PCI Wireless (54G) cards for purchase in Fort Collins?

Chad Perrin perrin at apotheon.com
Wed Sep 7 10:54:27 MDT 2005


On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 01:35:20PM -0600, Stephen Warren wrote:
> Does anybody know where I can get a wireless card that is:
> 
> * 802.11b/g (having a is fine too:-)
> 
> * PCI (or PCI<->PCMCIA converter including the PCMCIA card)
> 
> * Has native Linux drivers
> 
> * Available in stock at a store in (possibly near) Fort Collins - i.e.
> for immediate purchase
> 
> We tried Best Buy, and both the Netgear WG311v3 and Linksys WMP54G
> require the use of ndiswrapper - ick...

I don't see any responses to this yet, so I'll take a whack at it.  By
the way, I briefly introduced myself to the list prior to moving here,
then promptly fell out of email connectivity for a couple of weeks.  I'm
not a local Fort Collins resident, complete with broadband Internet at
home.  Hi.

First, I've gotta ask what you mean by "native driver".  There are, to
oversimplify things for clarity, basically three different types of
drivers for wireless 802.11x cards that work on Linux:

1.  standard/native
This basically includes Prism chipsets.  Using them is, reportedly, a
matter of just plugging the thing into the machine, turning it on, and
going.  I've never had the privilege of using such a thing, as they seem
to be increasingly rare and I don't think any of the supported Prism
chipsets are 802.11g anyway (they're all 802.11b, I think).  This is
what I'd call a Linux "native" driver.

2.  open source
There's the madwifi driver.  This is for Atheros chipset cards and a
growing number of additional cards.  It is only available, generally, as
source, unless you happen to have a LiveCD distro or something similarly
all-done-for-you where an already compiled madwifi driver might be
included.  I'm currently using one of these, and it was a severe pain in
the arse to get working.  Part of this has to do with the fact that
compiling others' source has always been something of a black art for
me: if you're the type to install everything from tarballs, though,
you'll surely have no significant problems with that.  There are
supposedly a couple of other card chipsets that have open source
drivers, but I've never seen one.

3.  closed source Windows
For these, almost every single remaining card is supported by
ndiswrapper.  Depending on your distro, getting ndiswrapper might either
be a matter of downloading and compiling source code or of simply
installing it from a binary package.  In any case, once ndiswrapper is
installed, you can use ndiswrapper to "install" your Windows driver,
then fire up the card.

I've been using Debian pretty heavily -- I use other distros basically
when work demands it.  What I've seen is that madwifi seems to ONLY be
available through the madwifi site and through third-party sites.  You
may have to experiment with different sites that have source-packages
available if you want to go that route, to see whether the provided
source is going to work with your setup, as I had to do.  With
ndiswrapper, I initially had to install from downloaded source from the
ndiswrapper Sourceforge website.  Something like a week later, it was
available as a Debian source package.  Something like a couple weeks
after that, it was available as a Debian binary package.  I got to learn
how to install ndiswrapper in all three manners on a Debian system as a
result, though for the life of me I don't recall most of what I
"learned" right now.  I can probably point you at the relevant websites
to get the info you need, though, and might be able to help out with
specific questions.

Second, I must ask why you specifically want a "Linux native" driver.
Is it only for convenience?  If so, I rather suspect you'll find it more
convenient, depending on distro, to get something that uses ndiswrapper.
Because it is a fairly standard kernel module that does nothing more
than provide a wrapper for a fairly generic API (as I understand it),
it's very easily available as a binary package in at least some
distributions.  Meanwhile, finding a Prism chipset card has proven
difficult at best in my case, and I've never seen a Linux-compatible
Prism chipset that supported 802.11g anyway.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong about anything.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]



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