[ltp] INTEL PRO 2200BG 802.11 b/g wireless LAN mini-PCI card

[Elliot F]

James Ryan wrote:
>>>having read about some of the trouble the IBM atheros chip can cause for
>>>Linux. This, however, is not as simple as I'd like it to be, as I'm
> 
> 
> Yes, my experience with the madwifi drivers on the Atheros chipset has been not so spectacular.  Whenever you upgrade your kernel you need to recompile the modules (of course) but it always seems that the madwifi module is very unstable for several months whenever a new kernel is released.
> 
> For 2.6.9 there were countless compile-time errors that had to be patched, and it was over a month before there was a compilable madwifi in CVS.
> 
> Now on 2.6.10 the madwifi drivers cause kernel panics on my machine...I have tried the latest CVS several weeks in a row with no luck, so I have been without wireless for a month.
> 
> I can't tell you about the Intel chipset, but if you decide on Atheros, plan on delaying kernel upgrades for a few months after a new kernel is released.

To put my two cents in, it depends on the distribution and what day you
pull cvs.  I'm now running Ubuntu (hoary) on my T40, and it works
wonderfully.

Part of the problem is that the driver has not yet (as far as I know)
had a "stable" release (it's only been cvs snapshots), so if you're not
using a distribution-tested version of it, it's kind of luck of the
draw.  I had some problems with it (when I was using Debian Sarge on my
laptop with madwifi cvs) every now and again, but it worked pretty well
so far.  The only "real" problem that I am having is that the madwifi
driver seems incompatible with utilities like network-manager.  When
using networkmanager, the wireless connection becomes unusable.  Some
info follows:

elliotf@frog /hm/lltf $ uname -a
Linux frog 2.6.10-3-686 #1 Tue Feb 15 21:49:36 UTC 2005 i686 GNU/Linux
elliotf@frog /hm/lltf $ iwconfig ath0
ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"coop"
           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point:
00:40:XX:XX:XX:XX
           Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:50 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
           Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
           Power Management:off
           Link Quality=48/94  Signal level=-47 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
           Rx invalid nwid:1274  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
           Tx excessive retries:11  Invalid misc:11   Missed beacon:1

elliotf@frog /hm/lltf $ grep -i ath /var/log/dmesg
ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
ath_hal: 0.9.12.14 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212)
ath_rate_onoe: 1.0
ath_pci: 0.9.4.12 (EXPERIMENTAL)
ath0: 11a rates: 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
ath0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
ath0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps
24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
ath0: mac 5.6 phy 4.1 5ghz radio 1.7 2ghz radio 2.3
ath0: 802.11 address: 00:05:XX:XX:XX:XX
ath0: Use hw queue 0 for WME_AC_BE traffic
ath0: Use hw queue 1 for WME_AC_BK traffic
ath0: Use hw queue 2 for WME_AC_VI traffic
ath0: Use hw queue 3 for WME_AC_VO traffic
ath0: Atheros 5212: mem=0xc0210000, irq=5