[gentoo-user] Are there ANY working wireless cards?
Just got around to trying to boot Gentoo 2005.0 on my desktop. My hard drive controller is now natively supported (Highpoint HPT372N), so the LiveCD booted without a problem. But now my wireless adapter (D-Link DWL-120+) isn't supported, since I don't have any network devices other than eth0 (wired) and lo. Seeing as how this is my Internet connection, I'm stuck yet again. (I'm not a big fan of stage3 installs.) Since I (strangely enough) have money in my wallet, are there any wireless cards that are natively supported in Gentoo? -- Colin -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Are there ANY working wireless cards?
Colin wrote: Just got around to trying to boot Gentoo 2005.0 on my desktop. My hard drive controller is now natively supported (Highpoint HPT372N), so the LiveCD booted without a problem. But now my wireless adapter (D-Link DWL-120+) isn't supported, since I don't have any network devices other than eth0 (wired) and lo. Seeing as how this is my Internet connection, I'm stuck yet again. (I'm not a big fan of stage3 installs.) Since I (strangely enough) have money in my wallet, are there any wireless cards that are natively supported in Gentoo? -- Colin Most prism2/GT boards work great with in-kernel drivers, but they can be hard to find. Atheros based cards are plentiful and are supported through the madwifi drivers. Some others can be made to work with the windows driver via the NDIS wrapper, but I have never tried this. Unfortunately, manufacturers change chipsets frequently, sometimes without even updating the version number of the product, so good luck! Check out: http://prism54.org/supported_cards.php http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Are there ANY working wireless cards?
On Tue, 2005-05-10 at 08:16 -0700, Richard Fish wrote: Most prism2/GT boards work great with in-kernel drivers, but they can be hard to find. I have a source for the MiniPCI version of these cards in the Philippines; we use the Prism GT Javelin chipset boards as an OEM module in our product. The company makes both Javelin and Frisbee based boards, as well as boards based on the Connexant/Intersil WorldRadio chipset. Some others can be made to work with the windows driver via the NDIS wrapper, but I have never tried this. I have successfully run a Broadcom BCM94306MP chipset using the NDIS wrapper driver. It was a PITA, used closed-source drivers and performed poorly. Avoid Broadcom's cards! I ended up yanking this board out of my laptop and replacing it with an Atheros CM9 reference design board. That is soon to be replaced with a Connexant/Intersil ISL3886 (Javelin) based card. Unfortunately, manufacturers change chipsets frequently, sometimes without even updating the version number of the product, so good luck! According to the local FAE for Connexant/Intersil products, the ISL3880 and ISL3886 (PRISM GT Frisbee and Javelin, respectively) are in full production and have not yet reached maturity, so they won't be end-of-lifed any time soon. The ISL3890 (Duette) chipset is in it's maturity phase, and is thus not recommended for new designs. The WorldRadio (PRISM GT Crossbow) chipset is also not slated for discontinuation any time soon. An important thing to note about the Intersil chipsets is the amount of available RAM on the MAC. The newer Javelin chipset only has 512Kb of SRAM on the MAC chip, so it require what Intersil calls a split MAC driver, where some of the higher-level MAC functions reside in system SRAM. The older Frisbee version of the PRISM GT chipset has 2Mb of on-MAC SRAM. Our product uses [vomit] Windows CE, so I'm not sure about split-MAC drivers for Linux. I'm sure there's some mention of it at prism54.org, but I won't be able to check it out until lunch... Check out: http://prism54.org/supported_cards.php http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz Amusingly enough, when Xterasys end-of-lifed the XG600 (which is a Frisbee-based MiniPCI WLAN card) that we were using in our product, that 2nd link is the one we used to locate another one! We settled on a model from Easix. They don't have any US distributors, hence my contact above. One thing to note, if you're looking to change the MiniPCI card in your laptop, be careful about what form factor it supports. Most laptops support some flavor of Type III ... Caution is due because Type IIIa cards are longer in the Y dimension than Type IIIb cards. Check the type before you sink any $$ into a card! Dave PS - UPDATE - Looked on Prism54.org and it looks like the Linux drivers do NOT support the so-called Split-MAC or Soft MAC cards. So stick with the Frisbee-based versions! The web site gives a somewhat accurate, albeit limited, assessment of the issue. The CARD manufacturers are designing the Frisbee chipset out of their products because it's about $1.50 more expensive in volume. So when they make 150,000 cards, that adds up to a chunk of change. Connexant/Intersil just makes the chipset, and they report they will continue to support and manufacture the frisbee chipset. Get yer Frisbees while they're hot! -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Are there ANY working wireless cards?
Josh Hunholz wrote: Most prism2/GT boards work great with in-kernel drivers, but they can be hard to find. Atheros based cards are plentiful and are supported through the madwifi drivers. Some others can be made to work with the windows driver via the NDIS wrapper, but I have never tried this. Unfortunately, manufacturers change chipsets frequently, sometimes without even updating the version number of the product, so good luck! I've found the NDIS wrapper to work AMAZINGLY well with many different Windows drivers! My built in wireless card on my laptop (made my Alink) actually does have a linux driver, but I have stuck with the NDIS wrapper and windows driver because of how well it works. :) --Josh Hunholz Hey there! :) http://acx100.sourceforge.net/ndis_cludge.html Please read why ndiswrapper is bad for you. Thanks :) -- [Name ] :: [Matan I. Peled] [Location ] :: [Israel] [Public Key] :: [0xD6F42CA5] [Keyserver ] :: [keyserver.kjsl.com] encrypted/signed plain text preferred signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Are there ANY working wireless cards?
Colin wrote: Just got around to trying to boot Gentoo 2005.0 on my desktop. My hard drive controller is now natively supported (Highpoint HPT372N), so the LiveCD booted without a problem. But now my wireless adapter (D-Link DWL-120+) isn't supported, since I don't have any network devices other than eth0 (wired) and lo. Seeing as how this is my Internet connection, I'm stuck yet again. (I'm not a big fan of stage3 installs.) Since I (strangely enough) have money in my wallet, are there any wireless cards that are natively supported in Gentoo? -- Colin If you have 22mbps hardware, you want the DWL-520+ (Same chipset, PCI version). Its 'natively supported' (emerge acx100), but you do need an initial Internet connection to download the driver. You could download it somewhere else and put it on a CD/Floppy, of course. But don't pull out that wallet yet! genstef, the Gentoo dev that maintains the acx100 package (which also provides a kernel module for your wireless device, acx_usb) wants you to contact him. Send him an e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED]. -- [Name ] :: [Matan I. Peled] [Location ] :: [Israel] [Public Key] :: [0xD6F42CA5] [Keyserver ] :: [keyserver.kjsl.com] encrypted/signed plain text preferred signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Are there ANY working wireless cards?
Colin wrote: Just got around to trying to boot Gentoo 2005.0 on my desktop. My hard drive controller is now natively supported (Highpoint HPT372N), so the LiveCD booted without a problem. But now my wireless adapter (D-Link DWL-120+) isn't supported, since I don't have any network devices other than eth0 (wired) and lo. Seeing as how this is my Internet connection, I'm stuck yet again. (I'm not a big fan of stage3 installs.) Since I (strangely enough) have money in my wallet, are there any wireless cards that are natively supported in Gentoo? -- Colin And heres a ebuild with USB support: http://genstef.homelinux.org/acx100-0.2.0_pre8-r6.ebuild -- [Name ] :: [Matan I. Peled] [Location ] :: [Israel] [Public Key] :: [0xD6F42CA5] [Keyserver ] :: [keyserver.kjsl.com] encrypted/signed plain text preferred signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Are there ANY working wireless cards?
On May 10, 2005, at 3:09 pm, Colin wrote: Since I (strangely enough) have money in my wallet, are there any wireless cards that are natively supported in Gentoo? I have some Allnet ALL0271 prism54 PCI cards available if you're in the UK or Europe. They're very good, have open-source drivers, and do WEP master-mode, so are ideal for access-points / base-stations routers. I believe WPA support is Real Soon Now. I wrote this HOWTO based on them: http://gentoo-wiki.com/ HOWTO_Building_a_Wireless_Access_Point_With_Gentoo Stroller. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Are there ANY working wireless cards?
Original Message Subject:Re: [gentoo-user] Are there ANY working wireless cards? Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 22:45:32 +0300 From: Matan Peled [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: Chaosite Destruction, inc. To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org References: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Colin wrote: Just got around to trying to boot Gentoo 2005.0 on my desktop. My hard drive controller is now natively supported (Highpoint HPT372N), so the LiveCD booted without a problem. But now my wireless adapter (D-Link DWL-120+) isn't supported, since I don't have any network devices other than eth0 (wired) and lo. Seeing as how this is my Internet connection, I'm stuck yet again. (I'm not a big fan of stage3 installs.) Since I (strangely enough) have money in my wallet, are there any wireless cards that are natively supported in Gentoo? If you have 22mbps hardware, you want the DWL-520+ (Same chipset, PCI version). Its 'natively supported' (emerge acx100), but you do need an initial Internet connection to download the driver. You could download it somewhere else and put it on a CD/Floppy, of course. But don't pull out that wallet yet! genstef, the Gentoo dev that maintains the acx100 package (which also provides a kernel module for your wireless device, acx_usb) wants you to contact him. Send him an e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED]. I'm emailing this message to the list as well as to you, genstef, just in case someone on-list (or reading the archives at a later date) can benefit from this. Correct me if this is a no-no. All right, you wanted me to email you. That's been done. Now, to setup my hardware, I think I'll do this. I've got one working Gentoo install right now, and then I've got my main computer. This is what I'll do: 1. emerge --fetchonly acx_usb acx100 on my working Gentoo system to download the sources. 2. emerge --pretend acx_usb acx100 to get a file listing of the ACX packages. 3. Copy the ACX packages to my USB key, and then move them to my distfiles directory on my wireless machine. 4. emerge acx_usb acx100 on the wireless machine. 5. Continue with Gentoo installation. If I copy over all the distfiles from the working machine as well as the stage1-x86 and Portage tarballs (which I can download in Windows), then I can theoretically do a stage1 install without my wireless connection, which will make me happy. Does that sound feasible? (And at what point during the installation does the emerge command become usable?) -- Colin signature.asc Description: PGP signature
