Differences between version 7 and previous revision of WirelessChipsets.
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| Newer page: | version 7 | Last edited on Sunday, January 16, 2005 9:10:04 pm | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
| Older page: | version 6 | Last edited on Sunday, January 16, 2005 6:57:54 pm | by GreigMcGill | Revert |
@@ -20,21 +20,23 @@
An excellent question, it depends on what you want to do.
The best cards for general 802.11b use are the Proxim Gold cards which contain a HermesWirelessChipset, these are well supported by Linux via a number of drivers. They will work in both AdHoc and Managed modes but they cannot do HostAP. If you want a card that can do HostAP (act as an AccessPoint), then you need to buy a card with a PrismWirelessChipset.
-DickSmith's sell a CardBus wireless card (product number XH8225) that uses the
Atheros chipset. These can be made to work under linux, but it is fiddly (see below) -- it doesn't come with the required linux drivers, and their website has a snapshot of the driver from CVS but it is too old to compile against kernel 2.6.9. Unless you are comfortable compiling a kernel from source, maybe you shouldn't consider buying one of these cards.
+DickSmith's sell a CardBus 802.11g
wireless card (product number XH8225) that uses an
Atheros chipset (AR5212)
. These can be made to work under linux, but unfortunately
it is fiddly (see below) -- it doesn't come with the required linux drivers, and their website has a snapshot of the driver from CVS but it is too old to compile against kernel 2.6.9. Unless you are comfortable compiling a kernel from source and grabbing the module source via [CVS]
, maybe you shouldn't consider buying one of these cards.
Alternatively, you could run [Ubuntu], and install linux-restricted-modules, and bingo, instant support. The [MadWIFI|http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi/] project provides distro agnostic support, also. -- GreigMcGill
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!!! Linux Kernel Support
-The following is from LinuxKernel 2.6.9, but should be similar for similarly-versioned numbers
+The following is from LinuxKernel 2.6.9, but should be similar for similarly-versioned kernels.
Check you have support (modules or built-in) for the following:
* CONFIG_NET_RADIO (Device Drivers -> Networking Support -> Wireless LAN)
# If you have a Hermes chipset-based card or a Prism chipset-based card, then you should enable the relevant option under the same section, carefully choosing the appropriate ISA/PCI or PCMCIA/CardBus support for your card.
# If you are using an 'Atheros' chipset-based card, you will need to download and compile an external module (not part of the vanilla linux kernel) from http://madwifi.sourceforge.net. But you should still have a kernel with CONFIG_NET_RADIO support compiled in. When this module is loaded, <tt>ifconfig -a</tt> should show a device called "ath0". Note that this driver also has a binary-only component which will taint your kernel.
+
+Once you have the correct hardware support in your running kernel (dmesg(8) should tell you if the card was detected), go and follow the WirelessSetupNotes to get your wireless machine properly configured and on your network.
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Part of CategoryWireless
