hi,

I'm a total wireless noob. I need a pcmcia card wireless NIC that will work in Mandrake 10.1, or able to work in linux. The only problem is that verizon sent the wireless router/modem yesterday, and its a 802.11g/g+ ADSL modem. now things would've been easy if it were 802.11b. There are tons of Linux NICS available for 802.11b, however I couldn't find (after 2 hours of searching) a 802.11g nic thats compatible with linux, much less working with Mandrake 10.1.

any help here would be appreciated greatly.

Did you look in the LinuxQuestions HCL?

I've been looking there, but I haven't been looking there for 802.11g cards.

crap the only Orinoco Gold 802.11/g cards on ebay are going for a buy-it-now for $69.

just curious, has anybody used the Proxim Orinoco Gold 8480-WD card on linux before, its not in the hcl, and was wondering if it worked the same way regular Orinoco Gold Cards work with linux?

Hi there, i´m running a Netgear WAG511 a/b/g Card with ndiswrapper on MDK 10.1.

ndiswrapper works, but there is a lot of reasons why not to use it.
I have to use it with my Broadcom chip and it plain sucks.
I cannot use Airsnort or Kismet with it.
Also, for example the link quality does not work.
The point is: manufacturers should produce native drivers.

Get a card with Prism or Orinoco chip and you'll have native linux support.
Check here for a card list with chips:

http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz

so just avoid anything which says Broadcom since they don't give driver specs (so there are no linux drivers). Also better avoid the ACX1** chips, since there seem to be a lot of complications.

Best is a Prism based card it seems, the acx100 driver even states it !

module acx_pci unsupported by SUSE/Novell, tainting kernel.
acx100: It looks like you've been coaxed into buying a wireless network card
acx100: that uses the mysterious ACX100/ACX111 chip from Texas Instruments.
acx100: You should better have bought e.g. a PRISM(R) chipset based card,
acx100: since that would mean REAL vendor Linux support.
acx100: Given this info, it's evident that this driver is quite EXPERIMENTAL,
acx100: thus your mileage may vary. Visit http://acx100.sf.net for support.
acx100: Compiled to use 32bit I/O access (I/O timing issues might occur, such as firmware upload failure!)

The acx100 devices are now *quite* solid using the driver listed above from acx100.sf.net and are available new for a good bit less than $69. The acx111 (54g) devices are in progress and are also working well, (just no wep yet) and so we can expect them to also be quite solid in time. Airsnort, kismet, scanning, signal reporting, are all functional, you even get to hack the source if you like, and AP mode is in the works, all in all, an acx is not such a bad choice anymore, especially given the pricing.

I have been looking for some wireless card to buy.
My findings are, the best thing you can buy is a card with a Prism or Atheros chip.

Some usefull inks are here:
http://www.kismetwireless.net/links.shtml

Personally I have the ACX100 builtin and it's not too bad.
I have seen a lot cheaper cards then 69$ and the are a/b/g.
So I would never buy this thing if I had a choice.

Who would want a wireless card with no WEP support?!
I wouldn't !

Still got two swallow 550 cards + AP, which does not support the Airlock enc (128-bit).
Anyone who would like this set for 40 euro's can respond .
Swallow had NT/win98 and linux driver, but firmware is not that stable.
Got it working under Mandrake though

cheers