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

[s p]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 19:04:12 -0800, Elliot F
<elliotf-thinkpadlinux@gratuitous.net> wrote:
> 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
> 
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> 

Thanks to all for your feedback. Incidentally, I'm presently leaning
toward Ubuntu as the distro that will be used. Again, thanks to
everyone, and all the best!

Sam.