Need help selecting wireless USB/PCMCIA

[tarheel92x]

F8
Dell Inspiron 5150

I have the above setup with an onboard Broadcom 43XX wireless controller. I have it working, b43-fwcutter and all that, along with Network Manager, etc. With previous releases of Fedora it worked fine after hours and hours of configuration, ndiswrapper, and all. I hate to say it but the wireless signal and connection are flawless with XP, on the same laptop.

The problem I am having with F8 is that it only works about 1/3 of the time, dropping connection or sometimes just not connecting at all. I really do not want to use ndiswrapper, I really just want it to work with minimal work.

What I would like to do is just dump the Broadcom, and buy either a 802.11b/g USB or PCMCIA card for the laptop and just use it. I would like to get a recommendation on a good, easily configured, cost effective solution. I have researched some and Trendnet seems to offer quite a bit of supported/with Linux drivers, options, for several USB and PCMCIA models.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

[Brian1]

Most USB ones will need to use Ndiswrapper but some support a few other modules. Not sure of a specific model though. Now in Pcmcia there is still ndiswrapper but more support for say an Atheros based nic. Last I new Netgear 511T is Atheros based which will use madwifi. I have used both USB and Pcmcia with ndiswrapper with great success and under Pcmcia using specific linux modules like madwifi, prism2, prism 54, orinoco_cs, intel 3945, and others. You goto http://www.linuxquestions.org and look under the HCL section on the site for list of hardware and what it takes to get them working. Word of warning. Just because one model works does not mean all revision releases stay the same. Not even in the same revision either. Have seen some have as many as 3 different chipsets under the same model and version number.

Brian

[MrHappy]

Hi, tarheel92x

I have the PCMCIA Card EW-7108PCg by Edimax, plug in, enable Network Manager and it started working for me.

read up on it over at http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/rt61pci

This page contains details about the driver for the chip used by this card (Ralink RT2561), links to places to buy it and the community portal for support of the linux driver

MrHappy