Wi-Fi eth card

[owakroeger]

I'm going to be in a location which may not have suitable land-line phone service for DSL. The site, however, does have Linksys for Wi-Fi, if you have a wireless card. Thus, my question. This is my setup;

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8375 [KM266/KL266] Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP]
00:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 0a)
00:08.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! MIDI/Game Port (rev 0a)
00:09.0 Serial controller: 3Com Corp, Modem Division (formerly US Robotics) 56K FaxModem Model 5610 (rev 01)
00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233A ISA Bridge
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 23)
00:11.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 23)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. VT8375 [ProSavage8 KM266/KL266]
And, this is my os/kernel;
uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.11.12-w4lvm #1 Sun Jul 17 13:16:26 MDT 2005 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

Can someone recommend a good wireless card which will setup easily with Linux?

Thanks,
owa

[owakroeger]

It occurs to me that this post might do better in the hardware section. If a monitor could move it for me, or tell me how to move it myself, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks,
owa

[imdeemvp]

This was the cheapiest and easiest to do: http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=43718

[owakroeger]

I got this advice from a Salt Lake Linux User Group member;
The wireless ethernet card would probably be easier. If you just got a
Cisco Aironet card, or pretty much any supported Wifi card, you would
just need to configure it like a network interface with a couple of
extra options. I use a Cisco Aironet 350 in my router here and it's
been working fine for over a year.

Using a router would also work, but would require more power, and more
hacking, since most wireless routers don't have options to make them
clients to other networks. They usually expect to be the hub. It's
possible to get it into a client mode, but the only way I know of is to
use a third-party firmware for a WRT54G/Gs router, then configuring it
like a Linux gateway router. Getting a wifi card would be easier, this
would be more geeky.

Cisco Aironet cards are officially supported by Cisco in the mainstream
kernel, so just about any Linux distro will have support for them; or if
you roll your own kernel, it's already included. There are others like a
lot of the Atheos chipset cards (Madwifi driver) that haven't been
officially integrated with the kernel (More work for you to support) and
aren't officially supported by their manufacturer (So support comes
through monitoring mailing lists and such).

-- Knight Walker <kwalker@kobran.org>
On Sat, 2005-09-10 at 19:39 -0600, Al Kroeger wrote:

>> Hey, thanks, Knight. That's just the information I needed. Do you
>> happen to know where I can pick up a Cisco Aironet 350 and about how
>> much it might cost?
>> Thanks, again.


I got mine from eBay but that's just because they were $150 at the time.
Cisco gear is more expensive than the rest, but when I got it, it was
the best supported. Looks like 340's are going for $60-90 on eBay
still.

Depending on how much effort you want to put into it, you could check
out http://prism54.org/supported_cards.php since the Prism54g driver
appears to also be in the 2.6 kernel that all recent distros should
have.

-- Knight Walker <kwalker@kobran.org>
So, I did some browsing and found a few possibilities for getting a Cisco Aironet 350. I have a reluctance to get electronic stuff online, so I found a few retail stores which carry Cisco wireless stuff; among them are Office Depot and Best Buy, and both have stores nearby. I'll go shopping today or tomorrow and post back with what I find.
Thanks for the reply. I hope this info, yours, that from Knight Walker, and whatever I can learn later might help others with their efforts in this regard.
owa

[owakroeger]

Just a quick update for anyone interested;
I couldn't find any local retailers who actually carried the Cisco pci card. On the advice of a local linux guru that Linksys wireless cards were a division of Cisco, and were likely to have the necessary driver built into the 2.6.x kernels, I purchased a Linksys WMP54GS at a local Walmart for $63.05 with the guarantee that if I couldn't get it set up on my Linux box, FC3 with a roll-your-own kernel 2.6.11.12 patched and configured for Win4Lin and VMWare, within 15 days, I could return it for a full refund.
Not really all that surprising, the driver was NOT pre-configured in the wireless module of the 2.6.x kernels at all, not even the standard 2.6.12-1.1376_FC3, 2.6.12-1.1372_FC3, or 2.6.9-1.667 kernels. So, I tried ndiswrapper. Although the driver for BCM4306 is supported with the bcmwl5a.sys, bcmwl5.sys, WMP54GSa.inf, WMP54GS.cat, and WMP54GS.inf files downloaded from the ndiswrapper site for this card, I could NOT, after several attempts, get the blasted thing to load properly. I even re-compiled my kernel twice with no help.
In the interest of time, which I don't have right now, I went to the linuxant site, http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader
and downloaded their driverloader trial program. Slam, bam, thank-you-ma'am, the downloader program installed and configured the driver for my Linksys WMP54GS. I tried it, and it works. So, I went ahead and paid the $19.95 license fee they wanted. This is a one-time charge for a permanent license. If I ever have to re-configure the card, I can do so with the license I already purchased. Cool! With the extremely limited time I had to get this thing working, it was well worth it. So, I just figure that my card actually cost $63.05 + $19.95 = $83.00 including tax. Still within a reasonable cost range, in my opinion.
So, that brings to a close the story of my quest to install a wireless card for my desktop FC3 pc. I hope this might help others who might be interested in setting up wifi on their systems.
owa

[3006828]

paying for drivers.. for unix systems...

the world truelly is a scary place after all. :P

it scares me to see capitalist ideas reach its arms into free hippy loving commune which is unix :)

[owakroeger]

Free, as in no cost, is great if it works. When it doesn't work, it isn't so great. What you're paying for in this case is the time and expertise that went into writing a script that would properly configure and load the drivers. You, as the consumer, choose to pay the price and use the service or find another way to accomplish your task.
My choice was to pay the price. To me it was worth it.
Your choice might have been different.
Choice is the operative word, here.
If all who make their choice feel they made the right choice, and feel that the outcome of that choice is in their best interest, then it is, truly, freedom of choice. That;s what Linux is all about, isn't it?
owa