Wireless NIC (PCI)


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Can anyone recommend a good card (b or g) that has Linux support? I currently have a 3com model (now defunct), which for the life of me couldn't get to work under any distro I tried and was the reason I gave up on Linux a while back. However I'd still love to learn it, but I need to be wirelessly connected to my network and the internet since it would be my main avenue to all the Linux knowledge and information sources that I would need (like Neowin :)).

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Do you already have a NIC in there (or built-in 10/100-base-T)?

If so, just use a WiFi bridge to convert from teh cat5 media to 802.11b or g.

I have not had luck with my Linksys USB adapter... :crazy: But it is probably because I gave up after googling, typing and cursing too much. :whistle: Maybe I should have asked for help! :pinch: lol

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Do you already have a NIC in there (or built-in 10/100-base-T)?

If so, just use a WiFi bridge to convert from teh cat5 media to 802.11b or g.

I have not had luck with my Linksys USB adapter... :crazy: But it is probably because I gave up after googling, typing and cursing too much. :whistle: Maybe I should have asked for help! :pinch: lol

I have built in Ethernet, and a PCI based WiFI card in my desktop. I need to be wireless since I'm not anywhere near enough to connect via cat5.

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I have a DWL-520+ pci (d-link 802.11b) card, there are drivers floating around for linux but not sure how well it works since I don't use them :p

http://store.yahoo.com/sagetac/redaidwen2wi.html I bought it like this, tho it's sold out, came looking brand new, and for $24 it was a steal ;)

http://www.ivor.it/wireless/acx.html is the link for the linux drivers, mind you I would ask others first, go to dslreports.com forums and see if anyone over there can recommend a good one for linux.

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I have not had luck with my Linksys USB adapter... But it is probably because I gave up after googling, typing and cursing too much. Maybe I should have asked for help! lol

Yeah I was just thinking about that. It'd be much more convenient to do it via USB rather than taking up a PCI slot. However I'm still not finding any Linux support. :/

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If you want a cheap USB one that works, the Linksys WUSB11 for $35 CDN, it works perfectly. I dont know if there is support out of the box on Redhat and other major ones, so I had to compile the drivers in Debian.

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If you want a cheap USB one that works, the Linksys WUSB11 for $35 CDN, it works perfectly. I dont know if there is support out of the box on Redhat and other major ones, so I had to compile the drivers in Debian.

That's the model I have.

There is not out-of-the-.iso support for it in Mandy 9.1. I have not tried 9.2 (need to D/L it first.. :p

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Well, here's my problem: I'm a complete newcomer to Linux, so I'm trrying out Knoppix 3.3 & PCLinuxOS to get my feet wet. I use a Microsoft Wireless Network at home, and I cannot get my USB Wireless modem recognized. In PCLinux, it shows it's there, but there's no config associated to it. Do I have to manually enter all of the network information?

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I cannot get my USB Wireless modem recognized. In PCLinux, it shows it's there, but there's no config associated to it. Do I have to manually enter all of the network information?

Hmmm... You say that you can see your USB ethernet in PCLinux? If you type /sbin/ifconfig in a shell or terminal window, what does it show you?

In particular I am looking for wlan0, or eth0 or eth1 information. My understanding is that WiFi can (maybe should???) show up as wlanx in Linux. I haven't gotten mine to work yet on my son's PC (loading Linux there as an experiment).

If it shows up, you might need to do an ifup to turn the interface on.

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It says wlan0. I used the Network Config option in the PCLinux taskbar; I'm not yet familiar with type commands yet :(

I just realized the reason it says wlan0 is because I have an old NIC in the PC. When I browse USB devices, it does show "USB Wireless Adapter".

I will try your suggestions as soon as I bootup Linux, thanks!

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wlan0 is good! :)

When you get the chance, you can type /sbin/ifconfig wlan0 and you should see something like this:

[mark@mjcomputer mark]$ /sbin/ifconfig eth0
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:21:DA:E6:0D
          inet addr:192.168.1.102  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2095613 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1845550 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:3969 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:1786957964 (1704.1 Mb)  TX bytes:412337034 (393.2 Mb)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0xd000

We can look at some of your config data here. It's a lot easier than looking at screens and tabs. ;)

(oh, and my example shows eth0, because I am using a hardwired connection on my PC, not WiFi)

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my linksys WMP11-CA works with 50% of the distros out there. There used to be drivers for it on the linksys site (that worked PERFECTLY) but they've been taken down for some reason.

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I use the Linux WUSB11 adapter. I found the drivers on sourceforge. The best source for wireless driver information is the following page, it contains a whole lot of information as well as a lot of good links, http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ Once I installed the AMTEL drivers which are listed on this page, the driver and card are automatically set up. I also learned how to write a script file to start up the card. I could attach it in another message if you're interested.

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