[ILUG] Slightly OT - Linux PPC CD's or DVD's

[Martin List-Petersen]

On Wed, 2004-10-20 at 16:52, Michael Conry wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 08:26:32 -0700, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> > I'd heard that prism54 variants are the only modern (802.11g-capable)
> > wireless cards for which there are completely open-source drivers.
> I think that's right.  And the only other functional 802.11g
> alternative I'm aware of are the atheros based cards using the madwifi
> driver that Martin mentioned.  Although the madwifi driver taints your
> kernel by loading a binary component, it does give you pretty full
> access to the utility of the card (e.g. to use a linux-box as a
> wireless base-station, or in monitor mode).
> 
> Outside of these two chipsets (and even with these chipsets, if you
> like), you can use the Windows drivers via the ndiswrapper project,
> but last time I looked you did not get full access to the card's
> capabilities, plus you are perhaps in some small way supporting the
> absence of Linux drivers.
> 
> What I found difficult was the problem of working out what chipset was
> in a card before I bought it.  The manufacturers change them very,
> very frequently.  In the end I got lucky and tracked down a low-priced
> PCI e-tech card from Marx Computers that turned out to have atheros
> components (last in stock), and then found the atheros based pcmcia
> d-link DWLG650 in Compustore.  I'd have preferred to buy prism based
> cards, but couldn't find any such PCI cards (marx, peats, komplett).

There is a pretty extensive list of Wlan NICs (including Host Interface
used + Chipset) on http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz
Usually it shouldn't be so hard to find any of the supported cards.

/Martin