[GLLUG] Meeting?

[Marr]

On Friday 21 April 2006 9:14am, Benjamin Cathey wrote:

> Everything was peachy until I tried to get the Linksys 802.11g card
> working.  I looked at my logs and there are a few problems.  The one I am
> going to address at the moment is the wireless.
> 
> It is using a Broadcom driver for the chipset.  Now, after much searching
> on the net, it seems the broadcom driver *can* work but will only actually
> function at 11Mbps.  Ndiswrapper seems a better way to go (that's how I had
> it set up in Breezy on the 600e.)  Can anyone think of a reason to *not*
> use Ndiswrapper?  I have never had a problem with it.

Hi Benjamin,

I've never used any Broadcom wireless hardware (they apparently don't release 
any hardware specifications to developers, which puts them on my "boycott" 
list) but recently saw that devices using the Broadcom '43xx' chips were 
finally successfully reverse-engineered, allowing the use of the open-source 
drivers at this site:

   http://bcm43xx.berlios.de

As for 'ndiswrapper', I'd use it if I had to, but only then. Last summer, I 
bought a wireless PCMCIA card (Netgear WG511v2, which [unbeknownst to me] 
uses the poorly-supported Marvell chipset, unlike my WG511v1, which uses the 
well-supported Intersil Prism chipset and 'Prism54' driver). The WG511v2 
worked somewhat with 'ndiswrapper' but was very flaky. It would completely 
lock up the PC at random times and would lock the machine up _every_ time if 
I tried to load the 'ndiswrapper' driver after I booted to the bare console 
(i.e. not running X11)! In short, 'ndiswrapper' was usable with a WG511v2, 
but just barely. I returned the card and bought a WG511T instead, which has 
different hardware (Atheros chipset) and successfully uses the 'MADWiFi' 
driver, with no need for 'ndiswrapper'. It was $10 more expensive, but is 
_much_ nicer under Linux!

> I guess I am just trying to get a discussion going here.  I am most likely
> going to use Ndiswrapper no matter what but I wanted to see if anyone was
> out there.

I guess what I'm saying is this... Use 'ndiswrapper' if you have to, but if 
any alternatives exist, try them too, assuming the hardware is built-in and 
therefore non-returnable! :^) In the long run, obviously, buying hardware 
with supported chipsets is the best solution.

Good luck and holler if we can be of any help!

Regards,
Bill Marr