hardware recommendation: 64-bit friendly 802.11G PCI card??

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Christopher Friedt <cfriedt-u6hQ6WWl8Q3d1t4wvoaeXtBPR1lH4CV8 at public.gmane.org>

| Received: by rock.ss.org (Postfix)
|     id DB09F3ABE9; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:26:00 -0400 (EDT)

| Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 22:25:04 -0400

Your clock seems to be fast by 24 hours.

| Can anyone recommend (from personal experience) an 802.11G PCI network 
| adapter that _definitely_ works in a 64-bit linux environment (i.e. 
| native linux source / drivers).

Only a few 892.11g chipmakers disclose enough information for Linux
(and BSD) driver writers.  In most cases, the drivers that work are
for Mini-PCI cards (i.e. built-into-notebook cards) and PCcards
(successor to PCMCIA).

I have a Broadcom-based card built into my AMD-64 notebook.  There is
a very new driver for this and it isn't quite working yet.  It is
based on reverse engineering.

I also have a PCcard for 802.11g that is based on one of the Prism
chipsets.  It used to work, but it didn't when I just tried it in FC5.
I did not spend the time to figure out the problem.  (For one thing,
the BIOS does not set up the PCcard bus properly, so there is a
"setpci" command that I need to issue before PCcards are recognized.
I don't remember, but perhaps I need to install a firmware blob --
something that Red Hat does not distribute (for good reason)).

| I purchased the TEW-423PI based on an earlier recommendation from the 
| list. However, to my surprise, it was not actually supported natively in 
| linux and only worked on 32 bit machines using ndiswrapper.

There is a 64-bit ndiswrapper too.  You need to combine it with a
64-bit Windows driver -- usually available if you look around.
ndiswrapper has a couple of disadvantages.  One is that WinXP allows a
much larger stack than the Linux kernel, so not all drivers work.
Another is that not all functions that Linux can use are provided by
ndis drivers.

I realize that I'm not answering your question.

The web does have stuff about Linux-supported chipsets.
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