# Wireless Cards ? Which one ?

## castra

As the Topic says Which wireless cards are best supported under linux ?

I got my eye on 3com home office connect package but can't find any info

about it so I need help from you ---> gentoo users !

Need as much info as you can give me guys...thanks  :Wink: 

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## dan2003

im on the same chase. have seen  other posts on the same topic which should  this probably have been in.. All i can say form my experiance so far is if you want to use with kernel 2.6 or most 2.4 kernels (including gentoo) is dont't get any card based around rtl8180 chipset. The linux driver is for most part closed source and is really useless  :Sad: . I bought the netgear MA521 which is based on this chip because i saw it had linux support. Too bad i did't research it more because it basically will only work with distros such as redhat and suse as far as i can tell.

I have purchased a usb 802.11b dongle thing and am waiting for it to arive. will let you know how i get on.

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## wokno the sane

My Linksys WPC11v3 has been working just fine with the linux-wlan-ng drivers for quite some time. Any other prism2 based card should also work with these drivers, though I don't know any specific models.

The Orinoco Silver and Gold 802.11b cards should work with the pcmcia-cs drivers, though I havent tried this. 

unfortunatly many 802.11a/g cards don't have native drivers ( i've heard that cards based on the Atheros chipsets may work, but i'm not really sure). these cards may work with this program from http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/ though.

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## brian33x51

I'm running a dlink wireless 11g card (dwl ag520 ??) connected to a linksys wrt54g router using the mad-wifi drivers.

I honestly am not sure which dlink it is but it's an atheros based with a one of those free standing antennas.  It works okay most of the time, but occasionally I do get hiccups where the card has to reset itself.  It might not help that I live in a condo unit and am trying to send the signal through some walls.

I couldn't not get the drivers to emerge properly.  I just download the ones off of sourceforge and use them.

Btw, I've used the drivers with both 2.4.20-gentoo-r7 and with 2.6.0-test9-gentoo.

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## MADcow

i'm the happy owner of an orinoco gold card

http://www.orinocowireless.com/

and a CF prism 2 card

http://linksys.com/

both work fine. the orinoco required a firmware flash and some driver patching in order for channel hopping to work, but nothing major.

the orinoco is the best decently priced card you can get.

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## Oopsz

I have a 3com officeconnect..  a 3crshpw196.  i basically got it just because its got the x-jack antenna, which is awesome.  It uses the atmel chipset.  i like it.

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## echo6

I have an on board Broadcom BCM94306 802.11g working using Linuxant drivers,  it actually uses Windows drivers and a driverloader wrapper thingy.

Aside from that I use a Sitecom WN-PCC-01,  Z-Com,  Prism-I based card,  works with yenta_socket and Orinoco drivers.   I also use a Dell TrueMobile 1150 MiniPC card which also uses orinoco drivers.

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## castra

A very nice respons to my question...

Can you guys post links to webstores that I can buy "these" cards from...

Maybe some European stores ( am in Norway ) ...

Thanks

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## fleed

The 802.11g 3COM officeconnect pack which includes one cardbus card works perfectly. I had no problems with it whatsoever. Just grab the drivers from www.prism54.org and you're in business!

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## emonty

 *fleed wrote:*   

> The 802.11g 3COM officeconnect pack which includes one cardbus card works perfectly. I had no problems with it whatsoever. Just grab the drivers from www.prism54.org and you're in business!

 

Could you please tell in detail how you got it to work,

cheers

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## fleed

1) I installed kernel 2.4.23-pre9 from source. 

2) Patched it using the patches from prism54.org.

3) Built new kernel with the prism driver built as module and also the firmware agent as a module (didn't work if built into the kernel). Built kernel and rebooted.

4) Copied the firmware file to the location specified in the Readme from prism54.org.

5) emerged the new hotplug ebuild which has support for firmware loading.

6) Downloaded the latest package from prism54.org, untarred, and built modules (I think make, then make install, use the readme).

7) Plugged the card and crossed my fingers... It worked!

Of course I had to try different things but if I were to do it again that's how I'd do it. 

What problems are you having? What stage are you stuck at?

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## emonty

I am looking to get a WIFI card, but can not get a "good" feeling yet. Checked the forum, but i see no real solution, it's a pity we are left on our own and not get any support from the hardware vendors, a well i will continue to check and until i get a good feeling i will get a card, prices are dropping anyway....so i guess i have to have a little patience.

thanks for yur reply, i will use the info!!!

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## fleed

No problem. The prism54.org folks are constantly updating the driver and it also works with other cards. I'm getting an Actiontec card next and am expecting the same results I got with the 3Com one. I'll post here with my experience.

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## echo6

 *castra wrote:*   

> Maybe some European stores ( am in Norway ) ...

 

http://www.komplett.no/ !!

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## birukun

Orinoco Wireless Cards rock!

I thought my buddies were just blowing smoke, but after buying a Linksys WPC11 v3, and getting mediocre performance, I tried the Orinoco Gold Card 802.11b and I LOVE IT.  It is more sensitive to signals and maintains a connection where my Linksys would have given up a long time ago.

I just ordered an a/b card (dual band) for 19.95!  The only bummer is the 12.95 for shipping.....

http://store.yahoo.com/justdeals/846105.html?AID=10274075&PID=268435&SID=993

I use Kismet and do regular stuff all the time with my 802.11b card and can't wait to try out the new one.  I am using Gentoo v1.4 on a Dell C600.

<disclaimer: I do not work for any company selling any hardware I am a consumer interested in passing on my good experiences.>

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## birukun

Orinoco Wireless Cards rock!

I thought my buddies were just blowing smoke, but after buying a Linksys WPC11 v3, and getting mediocre performance, I tried the Orinoco Gold Card 802.11b and I LOVE IT.  It is more sensitive to signals and maintains a connection where my Linksys would have given up a long time ago.

I just ordered an a/b card (dual band) for 19.95!  The only bummer is the 12.95 for shipping.....

http://store.yahoo.com/justdeals/846105.html?AID=10274075&PID=268435&SID=993

I use Kismet and do regular stuff all the time with my 802.11b card and can't wait to try out the new one.  I am using Gentoo v1.4 on a Dell C600.

<disclaimer: I do not work for any company selling any hardware I am a consumer interested in passing on my good experiences.>

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## echo6

It's so fast that it makes double posts  :Smile: 

Actually I would agree with you the Orinoco derived card is the best of the bunch.

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## birukun

Sorry about that folks - I am at work using Windoze and had to reboot in the middle of posting........

Cheers-

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## echo6

Ah,  that would explain it then  :Smile: 

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## emonty

 *fleed wrote:*   

> The 802.11g 3COM officeconnect pack which includes one cardbus card works perfectly. I had no problems with it whatsoever. Just grab the drivers from www.prism54.org and you're in business!

 

What is the serial/ id-number of your card, please?

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## fleed

Will check and report back. Why do you need that anyway?

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## emonty

got the 3com officeconnect card and it woks!!!!!!

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## castra

Fleed where did you find that kernel ??

Can you paste URL to it ? 

Thanks

PS

I bought 3com kit ( router and card ) !

Now I have to set it up

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## fleed

www.prism54.org has everything you should need. You'll need to patch the kernel yourself but prism54.org and prism54.org/forums should have all the info you need. 

Hey, emonty, sorry I didn't reply sooner. I guess you don't need the serial no's anymore... I'm still waiting for the actiontec card, dabs.com sucks!

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## emonty

[quote="hey, emonty, sorry I didn't reply sooner. I guess you don't need the serial no's anymore... I'm still waiting for the actiontec card, dabs.com sucks![/quote]

no, thanks anyway, good luck with dabs.com   :Wink: 

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## castra

 :Arrow:    fleed  

Check out this post on prism54 :

http://prism54.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=106

That explains what I did...please add or corect if am going something

wrong

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## dan2003

As promised .. I am now in possesion of 3 wifi client devices.. heres a breif summary.

1) PCMCIA Netgear MA521 - Not recomended, works ok with driverloader but hey, i dont wish to use this! (Couldnt make it work with the closed source kernel driver provided by realtek)

2) USB Netgear MA111 prism based, Very neat little thing, works very well (wlan-ng), highly recommend. 

3) compact flash (ebuyer branded) also prism based for use with my zaurus, also very good for the price.

At first i couldnt get wep to work with any of these devices but it turned out to be a bug with the configuration page on my belkin54 (F5D7130) accesspoint! a firmware upgrade did the trick. The config page will say no upgrade is availble but if you check the site www.belkin.com there is one!

Hope some1 finds this useful!

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## castra

Hello guys ...

I just made a breakthrough ...latest CVS 20031205 from prism54.org

finaly works with my card...All I need now is to setup network for it..

Does anyone know where to find info about it ?

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## xr31Daisy

I've just read the thread, and I'm surprised nobody mentionned this link :

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Wireless.html

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## alchemst

After reading that the prism54 drivers work with the DWL-G650 revision A pcmcia card (802.11b & 802.11g capable) and that the version B works with the madwifi drivers, I thought that it was safe to buy a G650 and a DWL-G520.  Supposedly, they even have the ability to do 108 mbps when used with like cards.  Both are called AirPlusXtremeG.

However, after looking on the back of the card, I see that these are based on a revision C that I can't find anything about (the last digits of the S/N are V.C1 which according to d-link.com makes it a revision C).  Does anyone know what chipset this uses and if it works with Linux?  Or do I need to return them?  I'd even seen one reference to TI making the chipset for G650+.  Is this the same or different than a rev C?

I know that atheros is supposed to have a double-rate chipset out, is that it?  However, after I install madwifi, I can modprobe ath_hal and wlan, but ath_pci dies with the following:

```

/lib/modules/2.4.20-gentoo-r6/net/ath_pci.o: init_module: No such device

Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.

      You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg

/lib/modules/2.4.20-gentoo-r6/net/ath_pci.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.20-gentoo-r6/net/ath_pci.o failed

/lib/modules/2.4.20-gentoo-r6/net/ath_pci.o: insmod ath_pci failed

```

Additionally, lspci is very unhappy:

```

# lspci -n

pcilib: Cannot open /proc/bus/pci/03/00.0

Unable to read 64 bytes of configuration space.00:00.0 Class 0600: 8086:1a30 (rev 04)

00:01.0 Class 0604: 8086:1a31 (rev 04)

00:1d.0 Class 0c03: 8086:2482 (rev 02)

...snip...

```

Any ideas?  Thanks,

--Jason

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