The 200mw cards are host stuff, quite literally if you happen to be personally constructed mostly of water, like the rest of us... I like them for access points (public web access at the OR country fair and burning man, this year, were made possible by such cards, as well as sotec's fanless SBC's running debian, thanks Clif!) but am wary of using them in clients. Often it is *way* more TX power than is needed, but if you are trying to get signal from a distance then that is helpful. Also good to use an external antenna placed a little further from your body than your laptop usually is... just a friendly reminder that this is microwave energy, which is good at heating up water molecules. Certainly 1/5 watt is not going to kill you, but if 35-70mw gets you online then that is really all you need. I am not an EE, although I think I remember that the power dissipates as a function of distance squared, so if you are twice as far away from your TX source as usual, then you are 4 times "safer" (getting less microwave energy, that is). Sorry I don't know if there has ever been a direct correlation between 2.4GHz energy and cancer in humans, but I like to play it safe and to take as much preventative caution as possible. Happy packeteering!!
regards, Ben B PS - are you running any wifi/gps software, like gpsdrive or some of the cool AP-mapping scripts?? Do tell! I recently got a GPS and have not yet gotten anything working with it under linux... I tried gpsdrive briefly and was impressed but it still thinks I'm located in Europe, which I think is the author's default. I have some waypoints I need to download, anyway. On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 19:50:15 -0700 Brad Davidson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: | I'm running Gentoo on my Pismo powerbook. I was doing most of my | wardriving with a borrowed Orinoco card, and a HyperGain +8db antenna | with a magnetic base. I got myself a Garmin eTrex Legend GPS, comes | with a serial connector, and has a built-in DGPS patch antenna. Since | the Pismo doesn't have a serial port, I got a cheap Belkin 'USB PDA | adapter' from Curcuit Shitty while I was getting the Garmin. (can you | tell I planned this out?) | | The antenna and the PCMCIA Orinoco were reclaimed by their owner, so I | recently got myself a Senao card from NetGate, and bought myself my | own antenna (same one I was borrowing). The Senao card is 200mw, and | is the same one that the Seattle Wireless guys use for their | long-distance links. It's prism2 based, so lots of nice Linux support. | | Here are some links: | Senao card: | http://www.netgate.com/NL2511.html | (got here in 2 days from Washington - great service) | HyperGain antenna: | http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/hg2409mgu.php | Will custom-build the correct pigtail for your card for an extra 5 | bucks. Mag base is great - stayed on the roof of my Maxima up to | 65mph, until the wave front from an oncoming Semi knocked it back a | foot or two. | | -Brad | | Grigsby, Garl wrote: | > I've been itching to try this for some time, but I haven't got | > any hardware yet, other than my laptop. In fact I spent a couple | > of hours about a week ago bouncing around Ebay looking at | > wireless cards and GPS antennas. I've been thinking that I would | > prefer a USB GPS antenna, but I haven't looked at what is | > supported on Linux. | > So what GPS unit are you using? What wireless card? Are there | > any wireless PCMCIA cards that will support an external antenna? | > I've been looking at probably getting a DLink DWL-650 because a) | > they are cheap, and b) they seem to have pretty good Linux | > support (prism2). So does anybody have a WiFi card they are | > looking to get rid of? I have some cash and lots of stuff I can | > trade. Just let me know. | > | > | > Thanks, | > Garl | > | > EuG-LUG mailing list | > [EMAIL PROTECTED] | > http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug | | | _______________________________________________ | EuG-LUG mailing list | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug -- _______________________________________________ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
