On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 05:13:22PM +0100, Zoran Kolic wrote: > I have an old laptop on which I plan to install 5.2 i386. > Using pcmcia it should go to internet. What wifi card to > choose: atheros 5212 or ralink 2500? Both are considered > supported quite well.
If you don't intend to run hostap mode then either card should be fine. I'd probably go for ral to take advantage of 11g modes. ath is better for hostap mode in my experience. It has a larger range and is very stable in 5.2 (it had minor bugs in the past but all known ones have been fixed). However, keep in mind that ath only supports 11b, not 11a or 11g (11a media options show up but the card doesn't work if I try to use them). ral seems to suffer from weaker range in hostap mode, has known issues with transmit speed in hostap mode (not sure if the rt2500 is affected by this but rt2661 certainly is), and has had stability problems because of driver bugs. For rt2500 all known issues are fixed in 5.2. For rt2661 they are *not* fixed in 5.2, only in -current, and the transmit speed issue is unresolved. I've been told the rt2700 and rt2800 ral chips work very well but I don't own such hardware. I own both rt2500 and rt2661. Both chipsets you mention are only available on the second hand market. Be careful if you don't know exactly what chipset you're buying. There are some ath variants which we lack support for, see http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=134901419419278&w=2
