Moving toward 802.11g... slowly

Can anyone tell me, in small words and some level of certaintly, what
cardbus (formerly pcmcia) card and base will work with Redhat 9 and
the least amount of pain and anguish? The card will be going into a
Thinkpad T20 and the base will be plugged into a 16 port Unicom
switch, if it matters.

Thanks

Mike-
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Michael W. Cocke <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
> Can anyone tell me, in small words and some level of certaintly, what
> cardbus (formerly pcmcia) card and base will work with Redhat 9 and
> the least amount of pain and anguish? The card will be going into a
> Thinkpad T20 and the base will be plugged into a 16 port Unicom
> switch, if it matters.

Hi,

as far as I know there are three possible chipsets for 802.11g cards:

1) intersil supported. There was a driver from intersil, released and
now developed as open source. For recent 2.4 kernels (18-22) it seems
to work rather flawless, it seems to have an AP mode (couldn't test it
yet) but the managed/vlient mode definitely works. It does not support
wireless extensions fully yet -- some options are only to be set by
rather cryptic setoid commands, more or less documented in the forum
entries.

http://ruslug.rutgers.edu/~mcgrof/802.11g/

requires kernel patch and special version of pcmcia-cs (which bit me
as that is not compatible with adaptec 1480 scsi adapter -- I've to
reboot to different kernel). the pcmcia-cs is included in the intersil
package, so only one download.

make sure to read the install directions and in the forums onm the
website.

SMC and netgear seem to use this chipset.

2) atheros

working drivers seem available, some positive reports on this newsgroup


3) broadcom not supported, but there just was a thread in this
newsgroup announcing a driver(loader) to make them work. might be
commercial, license required, binary only with no support whatsoever
with your kernel of choice.

Message-ID: <(E-Mail Removed) >
http://www.linuxant.com


K.-H.

On 16 Oct 2003 00:30:35 +0200, Karl-Heinz Herrmann <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>
>Michael W. Cocke <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
>> Can anyone tell me, in small words and some level of certaintly, what
>> cardbus (formerly pcmcia) card and base will work with Redhat 9 and
>> the least amount of pain and anguish? The card will be going into a
>> Thinkpad T20 and the base will be plugged into a 16 port Unicom
>> switch, if it matters.
>
>Hi,
>
>as far as I know there are three possible chipsets for 802.11g cards:
>
>1) intersil supported. There was a driver from intersil, released and
>now developed as open source. For recent 2.4 kernels (18-22) it seems
>to work rather flawless, it seems to have an AP mode (couldn't test it
>yet) but the managed/vlient mode definitely works. It does not support
>wireless extensions fully yet -- some options are only to be set by
>rather cryptic setoid commands, more or less documented in the forum
>entries.
>
>http://ruslug.rutgers.edu/~mcgrof/802.11g/
>
>requires kernel patch and special version of pcmcia-cs (which bit me
>as that is not compatible with adaptec 1480 scsi adapter -- I've to
>reboot to different kernel). the pcmcia-cs is included in the intersil
>package, so only one download.
>
>make sure to read the install directions and in the forums onm the
>website.
>
>SMC and netgear seem to use this chipset.
>
>2) atheros
>
>working drivers seem available, some positive reports on this newsgroup
>
>
>3) broadcom not supported, but there just was a thread in this
>newsgroup announcing a driver(loader) to make them work. might be
>commercial, license required, binary only with no support whatsoever
>with your kernel of choice.
>
>Message-ID: <(E-Mail Removed) >
>http://www.linuxant.com
>
>
>K.-H.

Thank you VERY much! I think I'll investigate the broadcom first -
looks like either Linksys or D-link uses that, and while I don't have
anything nice to say about their 'routers', at least they're easily
available.


Mike-
Mornings: Evolution in action. Only the grumpy will survive.
-----------------------------------------------------

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Karl-Heinz Herrmann <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

> 1) intersil supported.

[snip]

> http://ruslug.rutgers.edu/~mcgrof/802.11g/

[snip again]

> SMC and netgear seem to use this chipset.

See <http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html> for a table of
which products use which chipset.

> 2) atheros
>
> working drivers seem available, some positive reports on this newsgroup

See:

<http://www.atheros.com/news/linux.html>
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi/>

> 3) broadcom not supported, but there just was a thread in this
> newsgroup announcing a driver(loader) to make them work. might be
> commercial, license required, binary only with no support whatsoever
> with your kernel of choice.
>
> Message-ID: <(E-Mail Removed) >
> http://www.linuxant.com

This is some sort of emulation "glue" which lets you use Windows
network drivers on Linux. I am no expert, but that sounds like
something which would be hard to make fast and reliable... Has
anybody actually tried using it yet?

In any event, Broadcom refuses to release programming information for
their hardware. If you are a real Linux fan, you will avoid their
products for that reason alone.

- Pat