[Tfug] Intel vs. Atheros WiFi driver performance/stability?

[Jim March]

Big question off the bat: on a Mini-PCI WiFi card, there's "main" and
"aux" antenna inputs.  In the laptop there's white and black cables.
Anybody got a clue which is which?

:)

As most of you know, my Atheros-based factory WiFi Mini-PCI card in my
low-end Acer laptop was the victim of cruel circumstance at a TFUG
meet.  It's sad demise was determined at autopsy to be "death by coke
drowning" :).

I've been running since on a decent little $30 PCMCIA Atheros-based
Taiwanese card from SWS.  Works OK, but doesn't have the range of the
late mini-PCI card with it's plug-in antenna connections heading off
towards the screen.

Well today I was selling a fellow TFUGer the carcass of my old Fujitsu
laptop for cheap.  He needed a 15.4" 1280x800 screen and the old Fuji
died of motherboard issues.

In showing him how the Fuji came apart, we found I had an Intel-based
Mini-PCI card in the Fuji.  And since his HP laptop had the same
thing, we had no problem dropping the price on the Fuji carcass by $10
(down to $40 <grin>) so I could pull the Intel WiFi card - a
PRO/Wireless 2200BG.

Just got it working.  Signal strength bars, performance under
speedtest.net and general "feel" are all improved over the Atheros
chipset - either the original Mini-PCI or the PCMCIA replacement.
With the original internal Atheros card, signal strength 1 foot from
my router was about 68%, with the PCMCIA it was worse, with Intel it
reads 99%.  And it feels noticeably faster as well.

I know the "MadWiFi" driver project for the Atheros chipset is a bit
of a mess (shows up under Ubuntu under "Restricted Drivers" for
example) but seeing it side-by-side with the Intel driver, the
difference is almost startling.

Remember, I'm plugging the Intel card into the factory-original
in-the-screen-shell antennas...so performance shouldn't be a big jump
like I'm seeing.

What else...the dead Fujitsu this came out of was new as of...April
'05 I think.  The Intel card is supporting WPA no problem.  I assume
it's a 54b/g type.  A quick EBay search:

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=PRO%2FWireless+2200BG&category0=

...shows cards like this are going for less than $20 "buy now" - I
think I'm going to score an Intel card for my buddy's Toshiba -
another MiniPCI Atheros card right now.

So.  Upshot from that coke spill so far: for $40 total I have a spare
Atheros-based PCMCIA card I can use for diagnostics, etc. and an
upgraded internal WiFi setup.  I can cope with that :).  Worth it just
to see the difference the Intel card seemed to make.

Very interesting.

Jim