Recommended USB or PCMCIA WiFi for 802.11 b/g ?

[JLDausman]

I'm using 3.9 and there are many times I use it on other equipment, and it would be great to have a WiFi NIC that didn't require any driver configuration for 802.11 g. I'm not complaining about WaveLAN, I just mean I don't want to mod /etc files, transfer driver files and set it up everytime I boot up on a different system.

I've looked (googled) and I can't find any list of recommeded WiFi NICs for Knoppix, which does seem strange. I've a D-Link 802.11 b that works fine out of the box (DL-650), but it's only b, I'd like to find a WiFi NIC that works with Knoppix under 802.11g.

Thanks, Jack

[Harry Kuhman]

I've looked (googled) and I can't find any list of recommeded WiFi NICs for Knoppix, which does seem strange. I've a D-Link 802.11 b that works fine out of the box (DL-650), but it's only b, I'd like to find a WiFi NIC that works with Knoppix under 802.11g.

This is extremely interesting to me. I have a Belkin 802.11b PCMCIA card and two Dlink DWL-650 802.11b PCMCIA cards. The Belkin card was finally recognized starting with Knoppix 3.8, but the DWL-650's have not been recognized in 3.8 or 3.9 for me.

I know manufacturers sometimes slip-strean different chips into a product and don't change the model number. Sometimes they do add a new revision number (although occasionally they don't even do that). Are we talking about the same card (note that my card is a PCMCIA card with a W in the name)? If so the serial number of both of my cards (botton of the card) ends in V.M1, which I believe is the version number. What version number are your cards? Can you give me exactly what steps that you use to configur your card after booting the 3.9 CD?

[JLDausman]

Here's the URL to it: http://www.dlink.com/products/support.asp?pid=9&pv=1&sec=0

[Harry Kuhman]

Here's the URL to it: http://www.dlink.com/products/support.asp?pid=9&pv=1&sec=0
Thanks, sort of. That link confirms that you are talking about a DWL-650. It also shows a revision that is different than the two I have, the antenna is a wedge shaped thing (they call it an "ear") at the end of the card where my cards just have an extended rectangular shape. Again, can you please look at the bottom of your card and give me the last few characters at the end of your serial number?

[JLDausman]

It's ironic that my post is asking for any current PCMCIA/USB WiFi NICS, and I'm the one posting about a retired DLink NIC.

Here's everything that's on the DL-650 NIC

- FCC ID: MXF-WL211F
- NODE ID: 0005D-EE408F
- PART ID: 20020215850 H/W: J3 F/W: 1.3.5

The setup for WaveLAN has more to do with how I've configured my WiFi router, than anything else.

Hope this helps, I know other people have been frustrated with later models of the DL-650.

So, does this mean that only the Belkin and D-Link 802.11b's are identified as out-of-the box NICs for Knoppix?

The appeal of Knoppix is "Linux in 5 minutes" with little configuration. It'd be really great to find a NIC that would work well with Knoppix, with little or no configuration.

[Harry Kuhman]

Thanks.

I can now tell that your card is indeed based on a different chip set than my DWL-650. I can't tell yet what chip set your card uses though. You might be interested in this Dlink page (http://support.dlink.com/faq/view.asp?prod_id=357&question=General%20Wireless), it shows what cards have Linux drivers and what do not, but note that this does not mean that the drivers are (or even can be) included in Jnoppix. There are drivers for my DWL-650 there too, but they are not in Knoppix. At least yours are. And it should be mentioned that what Dlink calls "open source drivers" may not be open source at all. In my case the open source driver contains an insanely hugh pre-compiled module with no source code for it (almost 2 megs for just a driver!!!) and a tiny initalization routine that does include source code.

I don't know yet of any 802.11g card that works in 802.11g mode under Knoppix. The problem is the card and chip makers keeping the driver code and even the specs for the hardware interface so secret.