An older laptop (Pentium 4 about 386M memory) has just fallen into my hands
and I was wondering what the 'most' compatable 802.11g card is for laptops?
Orinico? Recommendations from those who have already installed and are
working. I will likely put Fedora 4 on the laptop if that helps narrow down
the 'best' option.
I'm not looking to start a religious war about the best distro, I'm just
looking for advice on pcmcia wifi cards that have good mod support.
I just installed Ubuntu on an old Dell CPi 366 w/256 meg of RAM and a 3.1
gig HD. I had a 2 yr old Xterasys WIFI card in it that worked with Win98
and it installed automatically under Ubuntu. It not only reaches the
internet (faster than under Win98), but can share data with both WinXP and
Win98se machines on the network. I got the card for $10 on eBay. BTW,
Xterasys uses the Texas Instruments chipset THETW1130, which is not
mentioned on the card, the box, or in the docs. In fact, Xterasys is not
even printed on the card. Now, that is a cheapie! Cheers, Wizzzer
--
Nuke 'em 'til they glow,
shoot 'em in the dark.
"Rico" <rico_001@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:vcz7f.9322$wG.4738@bignews4.bellsouth.net...
> An older laptop (Pentium 4 about 386M memory) has just fallen into my
> hands
> and I was wondering what the 'most' compatable 802.11g card is for
> laptops?
> Orinico? Recommendations from those who have already installed and are
> working. I will likely put Fedora 4 on the laptop if that helps narrow
> down
> the 'best' option.
> I'm not looking to start a religious war about the best distro, I'm just
> looking for advice on pcmcia wifi cards that have good mod support.
>
> Thanks!
>
> fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.
In article <dpL7f.18787$RG4.15761@fe05.lga>, "Wizzzer" <notme@noway.com> wrote:
>I just installed Ubuntu on an old Dell CPi 366 w/256 meg of RAM and a 3.1
>gig HD. I had a 2 yr old Xterasys WIFI card in it that worked with Win98
>and it installed automatically under Ubuntu. It not only reaches the
>internet (faster than under Win98), but can share data with both WinXP and
>Win98se machines on the network. I got the card for $10 on eBay. BTW,
>Xterasys uses the Texas Instruments chipset THETW1130, which is not
>mentioned on the card, the box, or in the docs. In fact, Xterasys is not
>even printed on the card. Now, that is a cheapie! Cheers, Wizzzer
>
Thanks, do you lnow if it is running a 'native' driver or the NDIS wrapper?
I guess my question should have been that doesn't require the NDIS wrapper.
But, thanks, I'll take a look for ards with that chipset. Does it support
WPA?
Rico wrote:
> An older laptop (Pentium 4 about 386M memory) has just fallen into my
> hands and I was wondering what the 'most' compatable 802.11g card is
> for laptops? Orinico? Recommendations from those who have already
> installed and are working. I will likely put Fedora 4 on the laptop
> if that helps narrow down the 'best' option.
> I'm not looking to start a religious war about the best distro, I'm
> just looking for advice on pcmcia wifi cards that have good mod
> support.
>
> Thanks!
>
> fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.
It's hard to generalize, but any card with a Prism II chipset can be
made to work, Orinoco, some Linksys (WPC11 ver 2.6&3.0), etc. You
distro should provide you with a list of wireless cards (probably mixed
in with wired NICs) in the network setup. The problem with the list is
that they tend to have a lot of European cards that share chipsets with
US cards and it's almost impossible to select from those lists without
knowledge of the chipset. The Prism II is a -b card, BTW. Stay far,
far away from Broadcom chipsets. Some can work with NDIS Wrapper, but
most are not supported.
You might post on a distro-specific forum for some specific
recommendations. Wireless in Linux is a work in progress.
[Packs bags, feeds dog, and leaves town in advance of the rushing mob of
Linux hacks descending on his house]
> Rico wrote:
>> An older laptop (Pentium 4 about 386M memory) has just fallen into my
>> hands and I was wondering what the 'most' compatable 802.11g card is
>> for laptops? Orinico? Recommendations from those who have already
>> installed and are working. I will likely put Fedora 4 on the laptop
>> if that helps narrow down the 'best' option.
> It's hard to generalize, but any card with a Prism II chipset can be
> made to work,
yes. Also ipw2100 & ipw2200 (Intel chips)
> Stay far,
> far away from Broadcom chipsets. Some can work with NDIS Wrapper, but
> most are not supported.
Again, yes.
> You might post on a distro-specific forum for some specific
> recommendations. Wireless in Linux is a work in progress.
>
> [Packs bags, feeds dog, and leaves town in advance of the rushing mob of
> Linux hacks descending on his house]
Well, it's an unfair characterization. "Wireless" in Linux works as well,
or better, than wireless in Windows - provided you get devices that are
supported in Linux. But, as with any hardware in Linux, sometimes specific
devices aren't supported because the manufacturers won't provide drivers or
even specs for drivers.
Really, just google for Linux, wireless, and your laptop. There's almost
always someone who's done it. Then get the kind of card they use.
--
derek
> Thanks, do you lnow if it is running a 'native' driver or the NDIS
> wrapper?
> I guess my question should have been that doesn't require the NDIS
> wrapper.
> But, thanks, I'll take a look for ards with that chipset. Does it support
> WPA?
I've tried it with both, there is no difference. The reason I tried was
there was a difference in the driver supplied with Ubuntu and the version of
ndiswrapper. I did notice it installs cleaner, automatically, with only the
Xterasys card in the machine. Installing manually or with both the Ethernet
card AND the WiFi card in the machine seems to cause the machine to hang on
boot at the loading of hotplug modules. If you just let it do it's thing it
works fine.
Linux Wifi laptop guidance requested. 
Linear Mode
