Can anyone recommend a wireless card?

spooon · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2003 Posts: 71

My campus has a 802.11b wireless that I'd like to connect to with my laptop. I can't decide between the Linksys WPC11 (bargain basement), Netgear MA401 (bit better), and the Cisco 350 (good and expensive).

I'd like to get the most bang for my buck and of course it's got to work with linux. Can anyone recommend one of these cards or any other? Thanks for any advice.

Strubenator · n00b Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 19 Location: Frederick, MD

Of the choices the only advice I can give is to not get the linksys. These cards suck and you will regret ever buying one (I did). Other than that I hear cisco cards will get the best range, however they are very expensive.

Having said that...I would go with an orinoco (or other hermes based) card. I have a few of these and they have worked out very well. They get good range and are very rugged (unlike the linksys). However these cards only cost about $50. They offer the most bang-for-the-buck.

--Strube

BradB · Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2003 9:37 am Post subject:

I too cannot recommend a card - but I can recommend against a card

Don't buy the Dlink DWL-520+ or DWL-650+ (note the plus!). These use the TI ACX100 chipset, which is not _quite_ supported under linux. Don't but any card with the ACX100 chipset.
Having said that drivers look like they may be out in the next month or two.

Brad

antik · Apprentice Joined: 01 Oct 2002 Posts: 212

BradB · Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2003 9:26 pm Post subject:

Oops - I ment DWL-650+, not 620+.
Yes, the non-plus cards are apparently prism2 based & work very well - which is why I bought mine - I just didn't notice the plus!!

Brad

mr_neutron · Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2003 10:22 pm Post subject:

I've got a Cisco 340 here and it works extremely well

with kernel drivers. The pcmcia-cs drivers don't seem to work (at least for me).

kwiqsilver · Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2003 Posts: 360

I've got a netgear ma401.
Here's a forum post about how to enable it under gentoo:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=38225&highlight=ma401
Just don't forget the note about ISA at the bottom. That had me confused for most of the past week.

bumpus

I would like to second the reommendation for the Orinoco card. I've had nothing but good luck with them. They're probably the second best quality cards and only cost half of what the Cisco cards do.
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Just because I can.