Re: [gentoo-user] Which wireless cardbus?

[Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>]

On 19 Feb 2007, at 23:15, Mick wrote:
>> ...
>> You don't state which model of Belkin you tried, but I can assure you
>> that they do a "set" (USB, cardbus, PCI) of 802.11g cards that are
>> excellently supported by the rt2500 drivers. These are excellent, are
>> OSS & you can get them with `emerge rt2500`.
>
> Well, I didn't want to bore you - I think I may have already posted  
> about my
> troubles with it in the past.  It is a Belkin USB WiFi adaptor,  
> Model No.
> K7SF5D7050A, which seems to have a RaLink chipset ...
>
> However, if you have any ideas to make my Belkin USB work again  
> then I'll use
> that voucher for something else.  :)

I can't comment on that, although it doesn't particularly surprise  
me. I know the drivers for the USB RaLink chipsets are less mature  
than those for the PCI & Cardbus cards - when I first started using  
those (100% success on the Belkin cards under Gentoo, very easy to  
get going) work on the BSD USB drivers was only just beginning.

>> I recommend this card, but if you're outside the UK contact in
>> advance regarding shipping:
>> <http://networkned.co.uk/Belkin_Cardbus.php>
>> FULL DISCLOSURE: I am involved with this supplier.
>
> Having been burned once I would rather go for something which has  
> matured
> enough to be in the kernel, if possible, but thank you for the  
> suggestion all
> the same.

I don't think you're going to be terribly lucky with that. I'm only  
familiar with the 3 drivers I mentioned - and I know there's an OSS  
driver available for an Intel chipset, too - but of those 3 only the  
prism54 was in the main kernel last time I checked, and cards with  
that chipset that are getting quite hard to get hold of. I have never  
seen a  prism54 cardbus card.

I appreciate your concerns, but honestly a rt2500 cardbus (or PCI)  
card is a safe bet - these drivers are very mature. I'm guessing that  
driver design for USB devices is more complicated &/or widely less  
well-understood than for devices using the "more traditional" PCI or  
cardbus busses (in fact, I think PCI & cardbus are substantially the  
same from the computer's point-of-view). I'd be very surprised if you  
were to plug on of these cards into your machine and `emerge rt2500  
&& modprobe rt2500 & iwconfig` failed to show it.

Stroller.

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list