Wireless NIC

[dave at math.mit.edu (David Backeberg)]

So wait a minute. The card has drivers for 2.4? Why not just run 2.4?

If you know the drivers for the card are loaded, have you checked whether 
you're loading PCMCIA support?

You should be able to hotplug / unplug the card, do a dmesg, and see the 
driver messages if you have everything working properly. What do you get 
with dmesg when you try this? You should also hotplug a different PCMCIA 
card that you know works, like maybe a 10/100 ethernet card, just to make 
sure linux is supporting the slot correctly.

What drivers is the card supposed to be using? I've never heard of it 
before. Is this one of those $8.95 specials from Microcenter? Cheap might 
not be the way to go on this, or at least not until you've chosen a 
compatible chipset. I haven't heard of "win-nics" but if the chipset only 
releases its specs under NDA, and the manufacturer doesn't release a 
linux driver, then it's as useless as a winmodem. If you do get it working,
it still might be a PoS.

You could also try forking over $20 to linuxant.com,
https://www.linuxant.com/store/
but if you add $20 to the price of your wireless card, and add in the value of
your time fighting a card that doesn't support linux, you're better off buying
a good card in the first place.

If you're going to buy a new card, you might as well spend a bit more 
and get a card that does 802.11g/a. I'm prejudiced toward cards with the 
port for plugging in an external antenna. SMC, Orinoco, and some others 
meet these qualifications.

-- 
David Backeberg (dave at math.mit.edu)
Network Staff Assistant
MIT Math Dept.
Rm. 2-332            (617) 253-4995

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004, Anthony Gabrielson wrote:

> Hello,
> 	I have a wireless NIC that Linux doesn't seem to see at all.  I even 
> tried ndiswrapper with no avail...  If anyone knows of a cheap 802.11b card I 
> can get for my laptop that will work with a 2.6 kernel or through ndiswrapper 
> I would appreciate a heads up.  If anyone know how to kick a VCTnet PC11BR 
> card into working that would be even better.  Funny thing is this card had 
> drivers for 2.4 that seemed to be dropped going into 2.6.  Also Linux can not 
> find (i.e. even see) either of the two examples for this card at all, really 
> strange as it can be found and work under windows.  Would anyone be familiar 
> with why the NICS aren't being seen?  Could these be win nics?  Does such a 
> thing exist....
>
> Thanks,
> Anthony
>
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