Pci wifi card for nix and xp

[jlw]

I will but a pci wifi card into a few of my machines.. I hate cords... but5 which card should I go with I want xp, linux, unix support...

[noid]

Linksys is the way to go. I installed a D-Link WiFi PCI card in my little brothers computer yesterday and it was a pain in the ass.

[astcell]

People still use D-Link? Did the nic have dip switches too?

[noid]

No, but I had to do the Hokey Pokey to get it to work.

[TheCotMan]

No, but I had to do the Hokey Pokey to get it to work.

We have had problems with D-Link in the past on Linux; D-Link has been known to change the chipset on their PCMCIA cards while retaining the same model number. :-/ (Sooooo STUPID!)

We encountered no fewer than *3* different chipset revisions for the same published model number. This made consultation of the HCL of support cards by PCMCIA-CS and the kernel-based PCMCIA drivers nearly useless.

Even though I have a few D-Link, LinkSys and Cisco AiroNet cards and find D-Link are an excellent value, consider the warning above. If the model of card you have does not work even though the HCL says it should, you might be able to return it and exchange for another of the same model until you get one that works, or wait until new drivers are made for a different chipset. (When D-Link work, they are a great value.)

I only mention this because many 802.11* PCI cards have actually been simple PCMCIA bridges with a PCMCIA card attached.

OB URL to forum where issue of changing chipset is stated.

[skroo]

I've been really happy with my Netgear WG311. Works fine with native Windows drivers under 2000 and XP, and equally well under *nix using either the Linuxant or ndiswrapper driver wrappers. Note that under *nix, both of these will still require the Windows drivers to function; more information can be found at both of those URLs.

[dataw0lf]

Linksys is the way to go. I installed a D-Link WiFi PCI card in my little brothers computer yesterday and it was a pain in the ass.

I disagree; I've had several problems with the Linksys WMP54G. I was using ndiswrapper at the time; Broadcom has released native drivers now, but I'm not a big fan of their chipset, personally, anyways, and I've still heard of problems with it. From what I've gathered online, the general consesus agrees that Linksys cards are pretty much crap. I've heard good things about both Aironet and Netgear, but haven't used either personally.
dataw0lf

[LosT]

I've had problems with DLink as well...on certain laptops older bioses have problems with DLink PCMCIAs....

Linksys was great until they went with that "speedbooster" crap... ;)


LosT