[Tfug] Recommended wireless network cards

[John Karns]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 12:28 AM, Glen Pfeiffer <glen at thepfeiffers.net> wrote:
> I got some feedback on this at the last Happy Hour, but I've
>  forgotten your responses. I would like to purchase a hassle free
>  wireless network card to use on my Laptop, which runs Debian
>  Stable.
>
>  Suggestions?

I have an older Thinkpad with an integrated Atheros card.  Rather
unimpressive performance in terms of sensitivity.  Others I've tried
seem much better.

Any of the cards based on the Orinoco Gold (uses the hermes module).
I have one of the 1st generation cards, branded as a Dell Truemobile
1150.  Cards based on the chip were ubiquitous, and it's the one I use
when I can't get any of the others to connect - it's 802.11b, so it's
not my 1st choice.  People often refer to them as Prism cards.

I'm not sure about cards using the newer generations (802.11g) of the
Orinoco chip.  I've seen some complaints about getting some of them to
work.

Due to the lack of sensitivity with the Atheros, I often plug in a
Hawking Tech HWU54G USB stick, which is _much_ more sensitive - will
show 100% signal, when the Atheros shows 30% or less.  About this time
last year, I bought a few of these reconditioned to have around - got
'em pretty darn cheap.
They use a Zydos 1211 chip, and from what I can tell, the driver is
unencumbered FOSS.  For more compatibility info on the chip, see:
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_chipset.php?chipset=Zydas

Two cards / chip types which were complete duds for me were:

1) A Linksys pcmcia card (2003 vintage, 802.11g) which used a Broadcom
chip.  I tried using ndiswrapper with the 'blowz driver for it, which
would hang the machine (older Ubuntu, v 5.10 I believe, but with
updated kernels from kernel.org).

2) a couple of Belkin USB sticks (802.11g).  The cases are identical
and labeled as model F5D7050, but each has a completely different
architecture.  One had a Ralink rt2500, the other, some kind of
intersil chip.

Although I've seen some reports of success with the rt2500 via
ndiswrapper, I couldn't get an IP connection established with either
chipset.

HTH.

-- 
John