andrewb758

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Ummm...this thing works fine for me.

It uses a Prism2.5 chipset, but the caveat is that it has no on-board firmware. It is downloaded into volatile memory by the D-Link drivers. This is why it doesn't work right away using the orinoco_cs driver. There are two drivers that work, one better than the other: HostAP and wlan-ng. HostAP's support is by far the most developed and stable, although I believe the necessary functionality is only in CVS. I have heard that wlan-ng has preliminary support for cards like this but I haven't tested it myself.

You will need to download firmware and read up on how to upload it to your card. This is not for the faint-hearted, although it's pretty routine once you get used to it. See the HostAP mailing list archives, and read http://home.columbus.rr.com/andrewbarr/dwl520e1.html for instructions for the PCI cousin of this card, the DWL-520 rev. E.

pculliton

Just wanted to throw up a post in agreement -- this thing works flawlessly for me. I currently use the wlan-ng drivers -- mostly because I enjoy pain, and they work fine -- although the HostAP drivers do supposedly work better.

I will admit that, until I worked out how to flash the firmware, I would have given this card a very poor rating, and with all of the negative information on the web about this product and Linux, it can be tough to sift out the little nuggets of wonderment that actually allow you to use the thing.

The wlan-ng drivers can be obtained nyah:
http://www.linux-wlan.com/linux-wlan/

Whereas the hostap drivers are:
http://hostap.epitest.fi/
(This is the link I used -- if somebody could verify that this is the correct place to be grabbing these from, that would be nice)

And I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be posting up the location of the firmware, but I'm sure a helpful moderator will pull this link down if necessary -- also would be good to verify that this is the correct place to get these -- they work for me, but YMMV (you might as well just grab all of the *.hex files that are in this directory -- you will certainly need a number of them):
http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/firmware/1.7.4/

Good luck!
Phil

If you have questions, please drop me a line at sntience _at_ cyberspace.org.

icyfire0573

from reading the other reviews I found out that it was possible for this to work, and i downloaded all of the firmware and everything, but after 2 hours of running around i ended up just downloading the Linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1pre21 package building from source restarting /etc/init.d/pcmcia and plugging the card in and it started right up

http://www.linux-wlan.com/linux-wlan/index.html

robert644

Uses latest wlan-ng distribution,

Slackware-current has a .tgz of this available in their package browser, built for the default 2.4.26 kernel used in the slackware installation.

From what I understand, the wlan-ng will only work with the kernel it is compiled against.

I could be wrong, haven't had the time to experiment yet

Tamerz

Using newest version of linux-wlan-ng it works flawlessly. Don't even have to worry about loading firmware etc. since wlan-ng does it all for you now.

shuuhen

I decided to get one of these cards because after rebates it would be the price indicated above. The only reason I had any trouble with this card was due to my level of experience with Linux.

Remember to edit all necessary config files. One I forgot to edit was /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia to turn pcmcia on. There are probably a few others I'm forgetting.

Also, both drivers do need the source for the currently used kernel with the configuration that was used to compile it. Remember to load the config file before compiling the drivers.

I'm using the HostAP drivers with it on a PowerBook 3400. The card even works at startup (with errors, but it still works). I did try the wlan-ng drivers, but they didn't completely work.

cwwilson721

Using wlan-ng, I had no problems, except it's just a 'b' card.