[ltp] Wireless LAN PCMCIA card

Crispian Thorne linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Mon, 09 Aug 2004 22:37:55 -0400


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Mauro Maroni wrote:
| Hello everybody:
|
| I am planning to purchase a wireless AP to be used at home, and also a
| PCMCIA wireless card for my TP600E and T20 machines.
| Any recommendation for that? I am just looking for a card not very
hard to
| configure in Linux, good performance and compatibility (what else can I
| expect? :-)
| Any suggestion is welcome. I am using Slackware with 2.4.X kernels at
this
| moment, but will move to 2.6.x soon
|
| Thanks in advance,
| Mauro

I am running Libranet 2.8.1 (Debian-based, I heartily recommend it!
www.libranet.com) on a ThinkPad T21 and have had excellent success using
the wlan-ng drivers. They are easy to install and work great! There is a
full list of compatible hardware here:
http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz.

I would recommend going for one of the pcmcia cards that use the prism
2/2.5/3 chipset. The three I have personally used and can vouch for are-

SMC2532W-B (excellent high power card- my everyday, really solid, strong
connection & incredible range),

Netgear MA 401 (works well, hard to find now)

and the Microsoft (*yes* Microsoft!) MN-520 (works well & is cheap!
Can be had on Amazon for about $22!- I just bought one to have as a
backup in case my SMC goes south).

All three cards work interchangably one I got the drivers set up, if you
have a problem there is an excellent how-to on the Libranet support site.

I have noticed that the SMC high power card seems to use more juice than
the other two (another good reason to have the cheapo M'$oft card in my
bag, I just switch to that if I'm gonna need max battery life).

Hope that is of some help to you, good luck!

- --
Crispian Thorne
linux@crispian.org
*linux & lovin' it*
Linux User # 329400
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