[ILUG] Adding wireless to a Linux home network

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> On Friday 30 January 2004 11:27, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
> 
> > I personally like USB cards as opposed to PCI. 
> 
> Not many USB WiFi cards seem to be supported in Linux at present.
> Which card(s) do you have?

I've a CNet usb dongle (komplett.ie sell them for about €40) and a few
other Belkin USB ones all based on the atmel gear.  I can look up exact
model numbers if anyone's interested.  They're far from plug and play
currently though.  You've got to compile the module against your current
kernel headers which naturally means kernel upgrades are a bit of a hassle.

> Are they working under Linux?

Haven't tried the CNet one yet (though it's reported to work well) but the
Belkin's definitely work well.

http://at76c503a.berlios.de/devices.html

> If so, which driver are you using?

There are two drivers. There's:

http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/news.html

though I use the rewrite:

http://at76c503a.berlios.de/

If you're dual booting you might need to be a little careful too.  The
at76c503a driver downloads firmware to the device.  If you then reboot back
into windows (98) and the firmware is not what it expects it basically
refuses to touch it and you end up fully reinstalling the device/network.
Replugging before booting windows solves this, though rather inelegantly.
My suspicion is that if I upgraded windows & linux to the latest firmware
(ie such that they matched), it'd be sorted but I don't come across the
issue too often so haven't bothered.

Gavin