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rock
n00b
Joined: 08 Aug 2003
Posts: 10
Location: Norway
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 Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2003 8:30 am Post subject: WLAN: PCMCIA vs PCI vs USB |
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Plan for WLAN support on a laptop. What kind of hardware is most likely to work?
PCMCIA? PCI? USB? |
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Carlos
Guru
Joined: 07 Aug 2002
Posts: 458
Location: Providence, RI
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| Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2003 9:52 am Post subject: |
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PCI on a laptop? I'm not sure how you plan to do that - or maybe I'm unaware of some new technological development.
PCMCIA is most likely to work, although it might be inconvenient if your laptop has only one PCMCIA slot that's needed for something else, like a CD drive. USB will probably work, because there are a bunch of USB network drivers in the kernel config under USB support, but I'd do more research before going that route.
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Man must shape his tools lest they shape him. |
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sa
Guru
Joined: 10 Jun 2002
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2003 1:16 pm Post subject: |
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| A cardbus card is just like pci card. On my laptop im using a dwl-g650.a1 wireless card. Since it is cardbus I dont need to use any of that pcmcia-cs stuff. But the driver for this card isnt really mainstream yet, and is kind of tricky to get up and running... |
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Carlos
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Joined: 07 Aug 2002
Posts: 458
Location: Providence, RI
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| Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2003 1:18 pm Post subject: |
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| sa wrote: | | A cardbus card is just like pci card. On my laptop im using a dwl-g650.a1 wireless card. Since it is cardbus I dont need to use any of that pcmcia-cs stuff. But the driver for this card isnt really mainstream yet, and is kind of tricky to get up and running... |
Where do you put a cardbus card?
EDIT:Duh, I should have googled. They go in a PCMCIA slot, huh - that's pretty cool. Would that cause problems with hotplug, though?
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Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.
Last edited by Carlos on Sat Aug 09, 2003 1:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ronmon
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Joined: 15 Apr 2002
Posts: 1043
Location: Key West, FL
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| Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2003 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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By far, the best information regarding wireless driver support can be found here.
Quite a few laptops include mini-PCI WiFi cards and some others have a port to which one can be added, though in that case the antenna may be a problem. It's nothing new.
But if your lappy has one or more PCMCIA slots, and no built-in WiFi, you have a lot more flexibility. The most useful things that I have found are an external antenna connector and driver compatibility. For me that has lead to Prism2, Orinoco and Symol Spectrum chipsets. |
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sa
Guru
Joined: 10 Jun 2002
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2003 2:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Carlos wrote: | | Would that cause problems with hotplug, though? |
nope, I think it actually works through hotplug channels. When I insert my card,
I get messages like this in my syslog (when I dont have a driver installed)
pci.agent: ... no modules for PCI slot 0000:03:00.0
cya,
sa |
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rock
n00b
Joined: 08 Aug 2003
Posts: 10
Location: Norway
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| Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2003 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Thank you all for nice replies. Nice to have that link provided by ronmon, a lot of info I've been searching for but not able to find before now. Thanks again. |
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